


On Becoming

by Mavrick



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, But also, Childhood, Childhood Friends, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Gen, Growth, M/M, Other tags to be added as the story develops, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Depression, TUA as a pseudo-military co-ed boarding school, Unfortunately there will be some bad stuff along with the good so, sibling dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25829794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mavrick/pseuds/Mavrick
Summary: Raised in a demanding household where unconditional love and loyalty had never been part of the equation, Vanya Hargreeves tries her best to navigate the world and find her place in it. As she faces a family as dysfunctional as it is overpowered, cryptic messages that seem to follow her throughout her childhood, and a world where kindness was a commodity not everyone could afford, Vanya learns to wade through the red tape her entire life seemed to consist of.Meanwhile, Number Five finds himself facing a faceless, ruthless enemy that seemed determined to make them all miserable.As unlikely a pair the two made, they uncover secrets that should remain unspoken of such as the nature of time itself, what happens when tired old men are refused retirement, and what exactly their foster father did on the weekends.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves, Vanya Hargreeves & The Hargreeves
Comments: 24
Kudos: 77





	1. Numerical Soup

Reginald Hargreeves liked to think of himself as a very capable person.

He was a visionary, first and foremost. Able to see that which escaped most minds, able to see past their weaknesses and adapt to their needs. This led a great hand in his inventions, earning him renown all over the world for his work in furthering cognitive potential, among many of his discoveries.

He had an answer for every challenge that was brought to his attention. There was no problem too big to be rendered completely unworkable, no obstacle that didn’t have a clever little hole to work with. He was adaptable, and by God, he was proud of the sheer usefulness he brought to the world.

And because the world needed him to, he had adopted seven extraordinary children that might be the key to saving it all.

He just hadn’t anticipated how demanding it would be.

His first mistake was to underestimate the neediness of human children.

They were clingy, loud, and altogether troublesome to the integrity of his experiments. Number Five had the worrying knack of getting into all the places that were dangerous for a toddler to be exposed to for any given amount of time. Number One still had trouble with controlling the strength of his grip and would cling to anything he could land his hands upon with more force than was necessary, bending table legs out of shape when he crawled past and leaving its contents to fall to the floor. Numbers Two and Four constantly disturbed his peace with cries for his attention while Number Six simply disturbed him (Number Six had yet to show signs of his own abilities but something about the air surrounding him that made Reginald’s skin crawl).

Unfortunately, the children are the subject of perhaps his longest and most ambitious running experiment, which meant changes were a necessity.

And so, it started with the nannies.

There were plenty of rooms to accommodate one for each of the children, all recruited from the most steadfast institutions in childcare and house management. Reginald had gone out of his way to ensure that they were all capable of meeting the basic needs of raising children under a demanding regimen that rivaled even the most auspicious households of antiquity.

Unfortunately, not even the world’s best nannies stood much of a chance once Reginald had started training the children to exert some control over the powers they had been gifted with. Number Three, in particular, had grown delighted with each of her whims catered to. A natural side-effect that Reginald should have foreseen with her influence on reality. 

He thought about rendering some kind of fail-safe to limit her influence over their caretakers for some time. In the end, it seemed to be a natural leap of logic to simply replace his staff with something that could withstand the powers of all the children, particularly the more… _dangerous_ ones.

Take Number Seven, for instance. While relatively mild-mannered compared to the other children, Number Seven had shown promise with the magnitude of her abilities. Reginald had hoped that her meeker nature (one he attributes to her possible over-sensitivity to the environment around her) would mean that she would be better-behaved in training but was sorely disappointed and alarmed when proven otherwise. It was a shame, though. Number Seven wasn’t temperamental more than the average child at this age, but it was dangerous to allow her—or any of the other children, for that matter—to throw around underdeveloped powers that could be used to bully weaker characters into submission. 

No, the risk was too great. With any luck, he should be able to perfect the dosage for mood suppressants in a week or two after keeping her in isolation. It would be irresponsible to have kept Number Seven’s powers unchecked. It was literally like leaving an atomic bomb in the hands of a child who seemed to have only grasped the idea of object permanence. 

Perhaps he, too, had needed help in wrapping his head around the depth of how the children would change his household.

A part of him was sorry to see their nannies go but Number Seven needed to learn to swallow oatmeal that may not appeal to her toddler taste buds but was surely appreciated by the body’s need for fiber and antioxidants. And paying for their insurance had been so wasteful. 

His second mistake was overestimating the limits of his patience.

He had never been a particularly social person by nature. What use had he of needless chatter? Of pandering to the whims of such temporary souls when there was so much work to be done? And if there were to be any hope left for the rest of mankind and all that lived in this world, he _must_ raise them all to be as ruthlessly efficient as one of his own machines.

By the time they reach the age of eight, Reginald has them following a strict schedule that covered their knowledge in general studies (such as introductory science, history, and math) as well as a regimen of play that developed their physicality through menial activities.

He had taken every precaution he saw fit to take, given all that he knew and all that escaped him. As such, the extent of which he allowed time to be taken out of his day and allocate energy and attention to his wards was nothing if not structured.

His day began at precisely 05:30, tucked away in his office and finding solace in the quiet provided by the lack of distraction. Unlike the rest of his property, the rooms at the main house had been left largely without soundproofing to deter any mischief happening under his nose.

Over the years, his estate had been transformed to reflect the environment needed for their training and resembled more of an actual boarding school than he’d ever imagined it would but he still had his work cut out for him. At his desk were plans he drew to renovate the Academy’s grounds soon, add an oval track, and a dedicated training compound. 

Perhaps he should keep the main house separate from the Academy to encourage the switch in their mindset when they’re at rest and at work. He considered his options, added, and redrew dimensions on a draft while waiting for breakfast to be prepared.

With hours to spare, he considers the day he had ahead of him.

At 07:30, the children should be making their own morning preparations. Grace would deliver her report on current events at 08:15 and Reginald would announce the roster of activities for the day.

At 09:20, they would all head down to what used to be the taproom at the ground floor but was currently being used as a small gymnasium, where Reginald would demonstrate the first bout of activities. The children would be debriefed about the objectives, mechanics, and proceed to warm up.

At 10:05, they should be starting the actual activity for the day. Mainly reaction time exercises and obstacle courses designed to test their dexterity and spatial awareness. They would start flexibility training at 10:50 as part of their cool-down stretches.

Their lunch would span from 11:25 to 12:10, where they are expected to rest and clean up in time for their afternoon studies. 45-minute lectures that would end at 15:30, then a quick 25-minute break until they were due for their independent studies. Dinner will be served at 18:00 as it usually is and Reginald would conclude with the evening reminders and performance review.

Work complete and satisfied with his agenda, he cleared his desk and made his way down to the dining area in good spirits that lasted for a good 3 minutes after taking his seat at the table.

”Five, could you pass the salt?”

“I thought I was Five?”

“You were Four last week.”

“Why can’t I be Five? Five’s a cool number.”

“Why Five? If _I’d_ pick a number, it’d be One cause I’m always on top.”

“One’s a _lonely_ number. It’s got no friends. Besides, Five’s a yellow color and _everyone_ knows I love yellow.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Oooh, can I be Six?”

"There will be no talking at the table during meals," Reginald intoned, bringing a spoonful of oatmeal to his mouth.

“Sorry, Dad,” one of them said. Reginald did nothing to conceal the grimace on his face.

“I am not your father, boy,” he said, lowering his spoon so he could stare down at the child. “ _Nobody is_. I have filled you in on the circumstances of your births countless times.” 

Not to mention the implied disaster of what would come to their relationships, given what he knew of them. Perish the thought of anything that could bring the Academy to disband.

“If you must address me, you will use ‘sir’ or ‘the Monocle’. Understood?”

“B-but e- _everyone_ has a dad,” the boy tried to argue.

“You are not just everyone. You have power and that separates you from those that have the luxury of holding on to childish expectations of the world. The world is not so easily distilled into your kindergarten notions of family. It baffles me that you would allow yourself to think so.”

He really should do something about Number Two’s incessant need for reassurance. Now that he thought about it, the boy had even started to call Number Seven’s caretaker as ‘Mom’. It made his lip curl in a sneer at his weakness, but it was understandable enough. He did build Grace to be a caretaker along with being a protector, taking care to make her as nurturing as an android could reasonably be. And if he were allowed to indulge his ego he would even say that he had done a remarkable job of creating a maternal figure.

"The children have recently finished their bi-weekly readings from Scholastic Books, sir,” Grace explained pleasantly, intervening as her social AI protocols detect distress from her wards. “It has a common theme for readers on the lower age levels."

_Oh, blast traditional children’s books_ , he thought. 

If anyone asked him, he’d say that they were too hellbent on hypnotizing young minds who should be focusing on the weight of the world on their shoulders instead of fantasizing about playing house.

"Then perhaps a change in reading material is in order. You will start with Sophocles."

"I'll make sure Pogo is informed," Grace smiled as she nodded at him.

The children groan and mumble under their breath but settle soon enough, the sounds of utensils scraping away at his fine china filling the air as Grace delivered her morning report.

  
  
  


Morning exercises started off promising. After Reginald had walked them through a demonstration of basic positions and pointing out which core muscles they should be paying attention to in the next hour, he’d sent them running.

“Pace yourselves,” he directed at the boys who had mostly been trying to outrun each other. “It doesn’t matter if you finish first if you render yourselves useless at completing the next task.”

“This is easy,” one of them said. “This is nothing. I can do this all day.”

”Number Seven, you are lagging behind. Stop dragging your feet and proceed with the task,” he barked at her, waiting for all of them to finish the eight laps he required before the beginning of their exercises.

The girl started to wind down, panting with the rest of the children as she came to join them at the end of the track. She slumped against the wall, where Number Six had already decided to lie in front of, having been coaxed by Number Four to join him.

“On your feet, all of you,” Reginald commanded. “Your bodies have to remain active unless you want to pull a muscle for the task ahead.”

“My legs hurt,” Four whined. Reginald scowled at him as he made the world’s slowest attempt at getting up by holding on to the other boy like a bald sloth. “I’m _moist_.”

“You’re sticky— _don’t_ touch me!”

“Can’t we get a break?”

“Fi— _Four_ , get off me!”

“You’ve had ample time to catch your breath while waiting for the last member to arrive,” Reginald responded.

He didn’t wait for a reply to activate the obstacle course—a series of platforms that rose from the ceiling, the walls, and the floor—sending the children scrambling on their feet for purchase.

Columns rose and fell as quickly as they came, cutting through the room in a dizzying path of diagonals. Number One was slow to grab on to the one that passed by him, holding on for a ride across the gauntlet without any hint of strain, and reaching the mark seconds behind Number Two, who ducked and dodged through the air like a particularly excitable cat, whooping in victory.

Number Five, passed through fairly quickly, having teleported onto platforms that offered better angles to jump and hop through. The girls seemed to be in competition with Numbers Four and Six.

“Come _on_ ,” Number Three said to Number Seven. “Step on the ledger to your right—no, that’s it, yeah! Careful with the left, it’s a little loose.”

“I’m not sure it would hold,” Seven called out hesitantly.

“Push yourself off the wall!”

“Get your butt moving, we’re gonna lose to the girls!” Six hollered at Four, who had the other boy trapped with him in a corner that was rapidly crowding with columns jutting out from the walls.

“I’m trying!” Number Four mewled from where he was hanging precariously from a steadily rising column.

“Just jump!”

“ _You’re_ the one that told me to hang on!”

“ _Because your legs are cramped_. Just lean forward when you land!”

“Heads up!” Number Seven warned before trying a particularly wide leap to clear. Number Three reached out to steady her, laughing in success as they made a headway to their mark and Reginald called their time.

“Seven minutes, thirty seconds,” he said. “If the building was collapsing, you would all be dead by now.”

“Seven was stuck,” Three tried to argue.

“By her own imaginings,” he shot down. “In an emergency, she cannot freeze in terror.”

Numbers Six and Four joined the others by the mark in disappointing speed.

“Nine minutes and twenty seconds,” Reginald called out, setting the room back to its idle state with a few push-buttons.

“Boy, I have told you that your muscles would give up on you if you do not mind it. Your upper-body strength needs working, that display was pathetic,” he addressed Number Four.

“And you,” he turned to Number Six. The boy looked up at him with somber eyes. He could feel something dark churning behind those eyes, undoubtedly already expecting what he had to say.

“You didn’t make any effort to use your powers.” 

Number Six lowered his eyes to the ground.

“I don’t think I can control it yet.”

“Hm.” Reginald looked at him once over, not minding how the boy winced in discomfort.

He turned his attention back to the red journal in his hands, opting to fill it with his observations on their individual performances instead.

“Proceed with your stretches,” he said, not looking up from his writing.

A collective sigh of relief was shared among the children, breaking formation and moving to different sections of the room.

“Thanks for the hand back there,” Seven said to Three, who was sitting down and stretching her legs out in a ‘V’ position.

“Sure thing,” she replied, as Seven mimicked her position, setting her feet against hers. They took turns pulling each other forward to stretch out in a seated straddle.

“I’m sorry we took so long,” Seven offered shyly. Three gave a dismissive snort.

“We took seven minutes. It wasn’t _that_ long,” Three said.

“I know. But Dad said—”

“You mean _‘The Monocle’_ ,” Three corrected in a caricature of a British gentleman’s accent that caused Seven to burst out in giggles. She smiled mischievously at her. “Oh, gosh, you don’t think he’s serious about that?”

Seven thought it through. “I don’t think he’s ever not serious about anything, ever,” she answered in earnest.

Three made a face, pulling Seven forward a bit more. _Ow, ow, ow_ , the girl chanted in her head as her inner thighs burned. 

“Do you think One’s okay?” Seven asked.

“Which one?”

“ _That_ One,” she nodded at the dark-haired boy that always took their lessons too seriously.

“He sure doesn’t look sad to me,” Three said, watching him crow about his record in disinterest.

Seven wasn’t sure.

“He didn’t have to be so mean about it,” she insisted, thinking back to how sad the boy looked earlier. She was pretty sure that he was a little too happy right now for it to be genuine. He’d started stuttering the way he did whenever he got nervous around people.

“Probably,” Three agreed, but her thoughts were on a different track entirely. “Bet you we could have beaten them in a fair game.”

“Who? Four?”

“No. _All_ of them,” Three said. “They just have an advantage because they got their powers early and _Dad_ ”—and here she used the word more out of spite—“doesn’t mind when they cheat.”

“Oh,” Seven said. “You have your powers, though.”

“That’s different,” the other girl waved her off. “Just because my power’s less physical than theirs. You know, one of them told me it was a girl’s power? I didn’t see who said it but I bet you it’s One.”

“Oh,” Seven said again, biting her lip.

They moved away from each other a bit as they shifted into hamstring stretches.

“Hey, Three?”

“Hm?”

“What’s it like to have powers?”

Number Three turned to look at her, tilting her head a bit to the side as she considered her answer.

“Well—”

“Number Three, go assist Number Four with his posture,” Reginald’s sharp voice interrupted, still not looking up from his notes. Number Three stuck her tongue out at him.

“You’ll get yours,” she told her instead. “Then you’ll be like us and you’ll know for yourself.”

Number Seven watched her get up and leave her to do floor exercises by herself and couldn’t help but feel a pang of sadness. She wished she could convince herself the same but all the others just seemed so amazing that it was hard to believe she wasn’t the only one whose powers haven’t manifested.

Deep inside her, she didn’t know if she even had any.

The thought made her sad and nervous, but it didn’t last. It was nearly lunchtime and she didn’t need powers to eat.

Reginald, on the other hand, had much to think about. Not for the first time, he wondered how long the effects of Number Three’s command over reality would last.

He didn’t join the children for lunch, preferring to keep to himself at this hour after it became evident that not a single one of them can sit still after their physical trials. Even as he turned to his office, he could hear Number Two bragging about his time, goading the other boys while all but clinging to Grace’s skirt, searching her artificial features for further praise.

He really ought to do something with that boy.

The children were learning to copy off behavioral quirks from each other and the last thing he needed was the little brat playing follow the leader and getting all of them to lose sight of the Academy’s true purpose for the sake of having his hand held.

* * *

Number Five was very bored. 

They had introductory science, not even biology or physics or anything streamlined—just science in general—and he had already worked through the book. It might as well have been one of those bright, square cardboard books you’d get a pre-schooler for all its use to him.

“White light is a combination of seven colors of different wavelengths. What you see as white light is actually the collection of colors starting from the longest wavelength, red, to the shortest one, violet,” she said, holding up a clear triangular prism.

“Can anyone tell me what this is?”

“It’s a prism! It makes rainbows,” the blonde One said, beaming up at her.

Five made a face. He swore, if today’s lesson ended up with them just coloring in a lab module…

He scanned his manual. 

> _Experimental Procedure_
> 
>   1. _Set up the experiment as shown in the diagram below._
>   2. _Switch on your light source._
>   3. _Regulate the position of the light source until a clear and sharp image of the components of light is seen on the screen._
> 

> 
> _On completion of the experiment, you should answer the following questions:_
> 
>   1. _Define spectrum._
>   2. _What color has the longest wavelength?_
>   3. _Explain the formation of the rainbow—_
> 


Yup. Right. This was a waste of his time.

Any idiot with eyes could do this in ten minutes. They didn’t really need forty-five minutes for this; he could be working on his powers and figuring out how to polish his spatial jumps!

"When are we starting Lorentz transformations?"

"After we've gone through your differential and integral calculus. As you can see here, light changes speed—"

"And when are we starting on calculus?"

"Oh, well that would depend on how quickly everyone goes through the fundamentals of geometry, of course."

Five looked over at One, the loud one who was busy balancing a pencil on his nose, and despaired. At this rate, it would take him ages to get to the parts he actually wants to learn, the parts that are actually useful to him. 

He’d read somewhere that Lorentz transformations were useful for expressions on how time and space were dependent on relative motion. One of its concepts was on how the apparent width and depth of an object could differ according to how someone would view it from different angles. There was a footnote there to be made of its relation to time and the new dimension it introduced with the concept of space-time, but that was a subject that he would tackle when he’d mastered the art of projecting physical objects of his choosing in any and all planes he chose to do so.

And to do that, he needed to understand the math behind it.

"Why can't we learn it now?" He pressed on.

The other children groaned.

Number Three, the one that looked Asian, was trying to focus on the work, reading through the experiment procedures, and taking notes. The loud boy that hadn’t been paying attention and had been toying with his pen shot him a glare. Even the taller, usually diligent blonde had his face scrunched in disagreement.

Number Seven—because she was always Seven, which made it easier for everybody when it came to the subject of names—is watching all of them closely, but shooting a curious look at Five, who’s busy trying to fast-forward the lecture. 

" _More_ math?” The boy that had been pretending to use his prism as a telescope wailed. “ Why would you want _more_ math?"

"It's the best way to learn about my powers. Just because _you_ haven't got anything worth putting two neurons together—"

" _Boo!_ ” Came his retort. “This lesson isn't even _math_ , it's _science!_ "

"Can’t you boys stop trying to one-up each other for one second?" The girl who was not Seven complained.

“Can’t _you_ go one second without bossing someone around?” Five shot back.

“I’m not _bossy_ ,” she stressed, narrowing her eyes at him. “I’m helping Seven set up _our_ experiment. Which is what we were all doing before _you_ interrupted.”

Five rolled his eyes. “There’s not much for you to do anyway. It’s just light. I’m sure Seven’s eyes work perfectly fine on her own.”

“Quite right,” Grace chimed in. “Our lesson today does focus on light. But did you know that some wavelengths aren’t visible at all?”

And with that, their robot caretaker effectively moved the subject back on track, much to Five’s disappointment.

His mood did not improve throughout the rest of their lessons.

For one thing, Number Five absolutely despises their history period. He likes reading for the sake of information but he doesn’t particularly like the feeling of repeating something he’d already read before. And he didn’t appreciate the types of books Grace chose for them; the colorful pages felt condescending, downright insulting, and was probably inaccurate given how much information they had to water down to be deemed fit for younger readers.

Number Five almost misses when they had nannies that taught them one-to-one with how he's expected to keep pace with the other children. He didn’t remember much about them, and he would probably forget more as the years came, but one thing he did know was that they didn't start off learning as a group. They would be tucked away in individual cells under one monitoring device or another, only let out for Hargreeves-mandated playtime. Or when the nannies were at their wits’ end.

He didn’t actually know what had happened to the nannies, now that he thought of it. 

It had been a while since they’ve grown accustomed to having Grace around to mimic social cues from. Out of everyone, she was perhaps the most constant adult figure in the house, the most constant face. The door always seemed to rotate with strangers. Before her, they had trouble even remembering who each new person was so that they’d only referred to them as The Nanny. 

Five remembered how that used to annoy his Nanny, none of whom had taken it kindly when he’d pointed out that it was as good a name as any. It was like their own names; sometimes he was Six, sometimes someone else was. But his role was the same: he was the only boy who can jump through space.

There was him and then there was everyone else.

Simple.

(His nannies hadn't appreciated the comparison very much, so he eventually stopped trying to explain.)

But something had changed when Grace came into the picture.

She was much more patient than any of their previous nannies, barring perhaps Seven’s. With her around, it was easier to pretend that they were like the families in the books she’d have them read, and it didn’t matter that she had wires under her skin because she looked so warm and maternal that it was easy to forget that she wasn’t an actual person.

And that was okay, he guessed. At least they didn’t have to always be around Hargreeves all the time. Plus she’d at least let them get away with more fun on their own.

“You’re doing it wrong.”

“Am not.”

“You are. See that? You’re missing a loop.”

“Well, I’m doing a different knot.”

“That would take ages! Here, it’s faster like this.”

“Oh shove off, my knot’s prettier.”

“That’s never going to hold someone down!”

From there on, it took them hardly any time to turn the afternoon’s activity into a competition of sorts. Grace had them all line up across one long table and had given them each different lengths and types of rope with the goal of getting the fastest time to secure different objects in as short amount of time as possible.

“And this is why _I’m_ the favorite.”

“How on earth did you come to that conclusion?”

“Because I’m Number One, of course. And I always have the fastest time!”

“That means nothing and you know it!”

“You’re just jealous that everyone knows I’m the best.”

“Oh, you are _so_ not—”

“Yeah, right. Best at being a complete tool—”

"You don't know that!"

“Look, I can prove it!” The boy cried.

He leaned closer, huddling forward with the air of someone imparting a grave and well-kept secret

“It’s the numbers, alright?” He said, holding their gaze with all the sincerity of an eight-year-old. “He calls us by how much he likes us.”

This gets everyone’s attention. He leaned back, satisfied by his gift of enlightenment upon the rest of them. Even the quieter ones look up and there’s a beat of silence before protests come up.

“Who would ever like you—”

“There’s no way. Absolutely not.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s impressed by the idiot who thinks licking light bulbs would make him the next Einstein.”

That one caught his attention. The dark-haired boy furrowed his eyebrows and looked hurt by a fraction of a second but was quick to cover his embarrassment by directing his anger at Number Five.

“At least _I_ don’t sound like a robot! I actually sound like a person,” and here he raised his voice in a mockery of Five’s own, “ _‘However shall we survive without our L'Oréal Transformers?_ ’ ”

Five could hear snickers and fought to keep down the blush rising up from his neck.

"It's _Lorentz Transformations_ , you idiot. Looks like someone’s been playing hero with his dolls too much again—"

“You sound like him so much that he probably built you, too!”

Five didn’t bother leaping through space to lunge and jump on the other boy’s back while the other boy moved to swipe at him at the same time.

“Stop it! _Stop it!_ ” Cried Number Seven in worry.

“Hit him! _Hit him!_ ” Number Four crowed—or was it Three?—by the front.

“Watch out for the table!”

“No one likes you!”

“That’s rich, coming from you!”

“Boys,” Grace intoned sternly.

The fight ended as quickly as it started, with Five taking advantage of the other boy’s short attention span, sending him down on his back with a swift swipe behind his left leg. The other boy landed with a loud thump on his head, groaning as he clutched at his head.

“That’s enough arts and crafts for today,” Grace said.

“But I haven’t shown you my jury mast knot,” one of the girls said. “Seven and I’ve been practicing since Thursday.”

“I’m sorry, dear, but your brother needs to go and rest in the infirmary for a bit,” Grace said soothingly, directing her words more to the boy. “No snacks for today. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until supper.”

“I am not related to that,” the girl muttered under her breath, tucking a loose curl behind her ear, but was largely unheard.

“I suggest you all proceed with your revisions. We’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow.”

Everyone took it as their cue to leave the room, sprinting out to different parts of the house, most definitely to not study.

Five was still angry. Unlike the others, he’d actually been productive but he’d sooner lick a cheese grater before missing out on snacks because of something that wasn’t his fault. His powers tended to take out a lot of energy from him and he didn’t want to rely on the far-off promise of supper to not use his powers.

He stood in the kitchen, glaring silently at the cupboards with a look of intense concentration only an eight-year-old could muster.

“Five?”

It was Seven, peering at him curiously a few feet off.

“What?” He grumbled, scanning the shelves for any morsel of sugar he could find.

“She locks the cupboards between mealtimes.”

“I can see that,” he said, already thinking of ways to work around them.

“She said we can’t eat until supper.”

“No, she said we have to wait until supper. There’s a difference.”

“Well, can’t you wait?”

Maybe he could try moving his hands through space? He hadn’t worked localized teleportation yet, but it seemed worth a shot. Problem was, he needed energy to test out his powers and he needed food to have that energy. Food that was, unfortunately, kept just out of his reach.

“You’re gonna cut off your own hand if you do that,” she said, making him aware of how he’s been talking out loud. To her credit, she didn’t seem to mind him rambling.

“Won’t know what I can’t do if I never try, now can I?” He said, already pulling a hand back for a trial run.

“Wait!” Said Seven. She climbed up the counter, stretching out a hand to reach the top of the industrial fridge.

“What are you doing?” He said in alarm. Seven was fragile. They all knew this. She got sick more than the rest of them and she needed to take her medicine to even be allowed to join them for playtime. “If you fall, you’re gonna get me into trouble!”

“Help me up!” She insisted, and he gave her a steadying hand, feeling like he didn’t have much of a choice.

She patted around the space in front of her blindly. “Just let me… _aha!_ ”

She flourished a set of keys at him triumphantly, face glowing with pride.

Five’s arms grew tired and sent both of them on the floor soon after, but that wasn’t enough to wipe the victorious smile on Seven’s face.

“She always puts the keys up the fridge when she thinks no one’s looking,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Thanks,” he said, helping her up from the floor. “What are you doing down here, anyway? Thought you’d be with Four. ”

Seven’s eyebrows knit together. “Why would I? He cuts my hair when I’m not looking.”

“No, the other one. The girl.”

“Oh, Three? I told her I’d catch up.”

“Why?”

If he hadn’t already been staring at her, he wouldn’t have caught the quick succession of confusion, sadness, and hesitation on her face.

“I thought…you were upset,” she said, cheeks pinking as she settled on an answer. She wasn’t looking at him, though, and for the briefest moment, he wondered what she felt like she needed to hide from him.

“So is One. You’re not sharing snacks with him,” he pointed out.

“He shouldn’t have said what he did. It was mean,” she insisted at him, causing Five to snort. As if the other boy ever found it in him to stay quiet. Being mean was quickly becoming a spectator sport in the Hargreeves household.

“I think he’s just lashing out because of what Sir Reginald said this morning and that’s not fair,” Seven added. 

Five grimaced. The old man had never been particularly warm but every day it seemed he grew less and less fond of the children he adopted. While Five himself didn’t see much of a point to trying to project a parental figure on someone who so blatantly refused to even try liking them, it didn’t mean he was immune to feeling sorry and awkward whenever the man thought it fit to put one of them on the spot like that. Especially when he knew he was only doing it to prove some sort of point to them.

Whenever he thought about it, there was a feeling that rose in him. A deep desire to be contrary and disruptive born out of the all-encompassing feeling of pettiness.

“Well, he wasn’t entirely wrong,” he said, not seeing the way Seven’s good mood dropped.

“You…don’t think he’s right, do you? About the numbers?” Her voice hit an odd pitch, so he considered her question. What was he supposed to think about the numbers? He didn’t really have a strong opinion on it.

“S’fair enough, I s’pose. M’not exactly anyone’s favorite,” he said through mouthfuls of snickerdoodles.

Much to his alarm, Seven looked even more upset. Her eyes stared back at him with an extra sheen to it.

He wasn’t good at this. 

He _was not_ good at this.

Oh god, what was he supposed to answer?

_I don’t think he’s ever been right in his life_ , was his first thought. It was a fair one, considering that One had been the last of them to memorize their multiplication tables. And he’d heard about the advice he liked to give Thr—Four, and if any of that had been genuine then it was a true wonder that anyone had ever let the boy hold any kind of opinion, ever.

But he had a feeling Seven needed him to be a bit more sincere. So. Honesty it is?

“I don’t think he likes any of us. Not really. He literally looks at us the same way he examines the little bugs he keeps in his lab.” 

He couldn’t help the shudder that went along his spine. All of them were well-acquainted with the feeling of being under a microscope, both figuratively and literally.

Seven didn’t seem very reassured, though, and he watched her fidget about, trying to make herself seem smaller as if she wanted to disappear and not be perceived like the bug in their captor’s office, trying to pick out which specimens were worth further study and which deserved the compost—

Oh.

It dawned upon him, then, by some mystical patron capable of more interpersonal insight he was born with, that if he thought he was disliked then Seven might have felt it tenfold. Going by One’s logic, she would be who Hargreeves disliked the most.

After all, unlike the rest of them, she had _always_ been Number Seven.

It made sense, the way she looked on the verge of tears. But clearly that was wrong because if anyone should be disliked the most, it wouldn’t be Seven, who came to check up on him and helped him steal snacks from the cupboard.

Why would Hargreeves even dislike her (more than he disliked them in general) anyway? Seven was quiet but always did her work with less fuss than Four. She was like the shortest boy, the one whose skin would sometimes crawl when they bumped into him. They were both nowhere near as annoying as the Ones.

He told her as much.

“It’s just a number. It’s like math. It doesn’t mean anything unless you assign value to it yourself,” he said.

“You’re just making that up.”

“No, it’s true! Math is completely arbitrary. The current number system we use with zeros didn’t even exist until people started copying India in Five-Hundred A.D. People used to count in terms of placeholders and it took them ages to even start using the decimal system but that didn’t make them any less than we are now. They just had a different way of doing things.”

And here Seven finally— _finally_ —started to quirk her lips back into a smile. He took this as encouragement for his dramatics.

“Numbers are weird even with context, Seven! Especially if you take it too seriously. Pythagoras had a cult—Pythagoras, the guy that made the Pythagoras theorem? A right triangle is just a bunch of squares surrounding it and the sum of the area of the two smaller squares is equal to the area of the larger square—yeah, well that guy had a cult. They were _vegetarian_ ,” he lost the fight in trying to keep a straight face, a full smile forming into a grin.

“—and didn’t eat beans and thought that intellect was a better basis for morality so when this guy Hippasus found proof that numbers can be irrational using the Pythagorean theorem—because the square root of two is irrational—they had him _killed_. Condemned to death at sea and sunk in a shipwreck.” 

Five went through the lengths of miming the ordeal with his hands, making explosion noises in an exaggerated display.

Seven stared at him for a few long moments before bursting out in laughter.

“I feel like you’re trying to talk to me,” she informed him, trying to stifle her giggles behind her hands. “But that is totally made up!”

“No, it’s true. You can look it up in the library if you don’t believe me,” he said, placing a hand over his chest in an earnest display.

“So you’re saying someone, what, discovered a number? And people didn’t like it so they killed him?”

“Yes!”

Seven burst out in laughter again.

“What’s so evil about the square root of two, anyway?”

“It’s because they never had irrational numbers before.”

“Oh, lucky One didn’t exist in ancient Greece, then,” Seven said slyly and suddenly it was _his_ turn to burst into giggles. A mental picture of One, head full of laurels, trying to run from a pack of lions in a colosseum without having his toga slip sent him into a long fit of laughter that went on even longer when he described the picture to Seven.

“Hey, Five?” Seven said after both of them calmed down.

“Yeah?”

“What’s the difference between two and the square root of two, anyway?”

And that was how Grace found them huddled around the kitchen table, Five graciously attempting to convey the importance of irrational numbers to someone who wasn’t at all on his level but was willing to listen to him ramble on about the square root of two and what its role was in shaping chaos theory.

Five had felt significantly better by the end of it, and even Seven had almost forgotten why they’d been upset in the first place.

“Children, you have six minutes until supper starts,” the android said. “Dinner is roasted chicken with lettuce, sauteed peas, and a potato puree with fruits on the side. Sir Hargreeves will be down in a few minutes.”

“Thanks, Mom,” they said and she smiled back before primly turning away, heading towards the dining hall a few steps ahead of them.

Everyone else had made it to call time, it seemed. The children were all lined up by the table, waiting for Reginald to be seated.

“Where were you?” Three said as Seven slipped behind the chair between her and Six. “We were going to test the knots on our dolls.”

“I was talking to Five,” Seven replied, trying to sneak a glance around the room while keeping her head forward. Sir Reginald didn’t like it when they fidgeted and would always demand that they stood at attention at times like these. “What’s Pogo doing here?”

“Not sure,” Three frowned. “He just said that Mr. Monocle has an announcement to make.”

They didn’t have to wait long for an answer. At exactly 18:00, their esteemed host joined them at the table in purposeful strides. However, he didn’t motion any of them to sit, as he usually did.

“It has come to my attention that there has been some contention about the nature of the Umbrella Academy,” he began, staring each of them down with his cold, dead eyes.

“Some of you,” he left no mystery regarding who he was alluding to by the way of his glare, “have expressed the gross oversimplification of the Academy as perhaps a side project or a… _family_ hobby to be undertaken on the weekend,” he spat the words with such vitriol Seven almost expected acid to spew out and melt the dinnerware. She could see One shrinking in on himself in discomfort from where he was standing.

“Let there be no mistake: the Umbrella Academy is the highest form of institution capable of taking responsibility for the world,” he said. “You will be held in high regard and expectations from you will be even higher. You are here to attend and excel at your studies, no matter how mundane or complex your juvenile minds may find it. You are here to be the best and you cannot fail.”

“Believe me,” he smiled at them coldly, “when I say that the consequences of your shortcomings would be dire.”

“As such, changes will be made to reflect your performance during your stay here.”

“Number One.” The loud One moved to take the chair Reginald motioned to, but was halted by his harsh reprimand: “not you, the blonde.” The boy in question looked up in surprise.

“…me?” The usually enthusiastic boy looked at Reginald for confirmation.

“Yes, you. Sit.” He waved him off. The blonde One—now _the_ One—did as he was told, looking around with a shy yet pleased air to him.

“And you,” he turned to the dark-haired former-One. “You will sit beside him as Number Two.”

He didn’t spare his heartbroken expression another glance. The boy took his seat without protest but in Reginald’s opinion, he still looked far too put-upon when there were five more waiting to be seated.

“You, girl,” he called out to the one beside Seven. “You are Number Three. Take the seat opposite to One.”

As their new numbers were called, Seven couldn’t help but feel hope and dread warring in her stomach. It was an ugly feeling, being picked last. Being the last person no one wanted. 

Maybe she wouldn’t be? Maybe, by some miracle, the times she’d outpaced Four by even a fraction of a second or when she’d worked out the puzzles Grace gave them would put her in a number that wasn’t Seven?

This was so much worse than what One—now Two—had said earlier. It wasn’t as easily dismissed as personal preference; it was based on performance and she _knew_ she was far from the best compared to the others that already had their powers.

The fragile feeling of anticipation died and was replaced by resignation when Six was called to the table. 

Reginald Hargreeves sat on one end, with the two chairs nearest to him left vacant so he remained separate from the children. The nearest to him were One and Three, the former who looked unsure but hopeful and the latter beaming in satisfaction of her efforts being recognized. Two had his face scrunched up and Six had his head bowed down the way he did when faced with upsetting news. Five’s expression flickered back and forth between disinterest and annoyance while Four kept glancing at him and the rest of them, looking the most unsure Seven had ever seen him.

Seven took the seat at the opposite end of the table, feeling barely tethered to the rest with how empty the air beside her was, no longer sandwiched between her peers.

As they were all seated, Reginald moved on to say, “do not mistake this as an excuse to be complacent. To further encourage this in you, keep in mind that good behavior will be rewarded. Excellence in your studies and practice will be rewarded while poor performance will be met accordingly.” He addressed the room with a stern glare, silently daring anyone to find out what the penalties were.

“There is no room for mediocrity under my roof. Have I made myself clear?”

A chorus of “yes, sir”s rang out despite the general unease at the table.

Something stirred in the air. This felt new, for all of them. Exciting for some, dreadful for others. This was the tip of the iceberg of changes he had yet to enforce on the Academy but it was nonetheless present in the turn of his wards’ collective mood.

These were the faces that would determine the fate of the world. One day, Reginald would have to declare the existence of the Umbrella Academy, but for now, it was enough to oversee how well the children could work together.

As they tucked into their dinner, he thought about the changes he still had to make. Whether or not he can make them on time and whether he can make it count.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) The Sophocles bit was because of the spicy family dynamics in his plays. If you're familiar with any of them...you know where I'm going with this.
> 
> 2) That bit about Hippasus's death may be exaggerated because of how old the accounts were but suffice to say he did actually piss the Pythagoreans off. Cool proof of how the square root of two is irrational can be found here: [https://plus.maths.org/content/origins-proof-iii-proof-and-puzzles-through-ages]. The tl;dr is that irrational numbers are difficult to pinpoint to an exact decimal point but the square root of two is useful for defining aspect ratios and approximations. 
> 
> Irrational numbers are also interesting in that approximations are kind of okay to use except for system of equations that have sensitive dependence on initial conditions, which leads us to chaos theory and the Butterfly Effect.
> 
> 3) Here's another cool link explaining the role of Lorentz Transformations in space-time: [https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_17.html]. There are really nice analogies in the third or fourth paragraph that makes it pretty easy to understand if you walk through it. It's worth a read. Would have quoted it in the fic directly but, alas, I have to respect copyright laws.
> 
> 4) I wrote this at various stages of sleep deprivation so the original version of Reggie's announcement was just: 
> 
> “It has come to my attention that there is joy in this household. This cannot stand. You are here for one purpose and one purpose only and that has nothing to do with the childish little games you wish to play with the rest of you. I do not care if you are children because you are no ordinary children. This is an elite academy and you are expected to rise above the rest. To solidify this message to you, I am going to announce your rankings, based on how useful you lot appear to be to me. Consider this your permanent record for life.”
> 
> Decided to make it more eloquent but that was the general vibe I was going for. Really hope I managed to capture that.


	2. When In Greece

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"We were just kids. Little kids!"_ \- Klaus Hargreeves (The Umbrella Academy, 2019)

“You know,” Number Seven said to Number Three conversationally, tugging at the handle of Three’s sizable chest of costumes, “this would be a lot easier if we just practice at your room.”

“We can’t,” the other girl replied, lifting the other side of the chest. “It’s getting too crowded in my room and we need as much space as we can get to move around!”

It was Wednesday, which meant that the Hargreeves children had half the day free to use as creatively as they could as long as they minded their homework. More importantly, it meant that they got to lounge around in civilian clothes without reprimand.

It had been Grace’s idea. Something that would help enrich their psycho-social development, she claimed. The children wholeheartedly embraced it, and, among all of them, outgoing Number Three owned perhaps more costumes than all of their individual wardrobes combined.

It certainly felt like so to Number Seven’s aching arms.

“ _Why_ must your room be so far from mine?” Three complained as they pushed past her doorway.

In the weeks since the rankings were released, changes had also been made to room assignments. Where the girls had always had their beds next to or opposite each other in their old bedroom floor, Number Three’s door had been moved to the other end of the hallway from Seven’s.

They were all trying to get used to their newly-renovated dormitory, each acclimating to the change at their own pace. Why, exactly, Sir Hargreeves built it with so many rooms when there were only seven of them escaped Number Seven, but her siblings readily made their own marks as soon as they’d finally been allowed their own space. Number One, for instance, filled his room with model scales of several plane models stored at the family hangar. Number Five was determined to vandalize every inch of his room with scribbles that resembled those they saw on their custodian’s notes. Seven’s room, in comparison, looked almost pitifully bare compared to theirs; her room had looked almost the same from when she’d moved in, still and slightly empty. Almost as if she were trying to preserve its novelty.

“You’d think it’d be—oh, sorry, One!”

“ _I’m_ sorry. Didn’t see you there,” the blonde One said sheepishly as if he weren’t the one that was practically rammed with a trunk by the door.

He did, however, peek at it curiously.

“What’s all this for?” He asked.

“We’re going over Dad’s latest reading assignment. Thought the costumes might help.”

“He doesn’t like it when we call him that.”

“I know but he’s not here now, is he? Seven? Do you see him?”

“I can’t really see much of anything right now,” Seven replied, making a show of peering over the top of the trunk. It might have been an exaggeration but it _was_ blocking much of her view of where her feet landed on the floor.

Number One perked up.

“Oh, here, let me,” he said, ever-eager to be of use. With no show of strain at all, he hauled the trunk to rest on his shoulder and grinned at them.

“May I interest you ladies with a chariot ride?” He offered, patting the side of the trunk with his free hand.

Number Three pretended to think it over.

“How fast is your steed, good sir?” She asked, eyeing the trunk on his arm as if it were one of Sir Hargreeves’s racing horses.

“’Tis as fast as the Northern Winds, my grace,” One said, matching her voice.

“Then we shall ride!” Three exclaimed gleefully, climbing on top of it and reaching out a hand to Seven to pull her up.

“Quickly, fair Antigone! To Greece!”

“To Greece!” Seven echoed back, clinging to the back of Three’s shirt as One sped them through the halls, mimicking the sound of horseshoes galloping past the other rooms.

They were unloading the costumes in Seven’s room within minutes of arriving and very quickly got into character. While they’d failed to convince One to join them going over their lines (citing something about exercising his own diligence and working through automation workbooks), Number Four had overheard their noise from the hall and invited himself over, picking out a bedazzled crown.

“I’ll be the prince!” He had declared.

“Do you even know what play this is?”

“Oh, _please_ . There is _always_ a prince in these plays!”

“Alright, but you’re playing the dead one.”

“Even better!” He’d clapped happily.

And so the children diligently worked through the third of Sophocles’s plays.

“Oh, Antigone, you’re so rash—I’m so afraid for you!” Number Three, acting as Ismene, pleaded at Number Seven.

“Don’t fear for me. Set your own life in order,” Seven replied.

“Then don’t, at least, blurt this out to anyone. Keep it a secret. I’ll join you in that, I promise.”

“Dear god, shout it from the rooftops. I’ll hate you all the more for silence—tell the world!” Seven said, trying and failing to keep her face serious and her eyes trained on Three.

It had taken them 20 minutes of memorizing lines for Four to lose interest in waiting for his scene, playing around with the rest of Three’s clothes in an impromptu fashion show instead.

“You’re wrong from the start, you’re off on a hopeless quest,” Three declared with vigor.

“If you say so, you will make me hate you, and the hatred of the dead, by all rights, will haunt you night and day—”

Four found a wig and a bedsheet he used to make ghostly movements, making it very difficult for Seven not to laugh.

“—but leave me to my own absurdity, leave me to suffer this—dreadful thing. I will suffer nothing as great as death without glory.”

Seven took a step back to the side, stifling giggles, as Three delivered her last line in the scene. Unlike her, Three took to the stage with as much passion as she did to everything else, and stared straight at her as if she _were_ the eponymous Antigone.

“Then go if you must, but rest assured, wild, irrational as you are, my sister, you are truly dear to the ones who love you,” Three told her, before bowing and retreating to the side of their makeshift stage.

“Bra- _voooo,”_ Four clapped from Seven’s bed. “Now you just have four, seven hundred lines to memorize?”

“You still have to memorize them, too, you know,” Three replied.

Four harrumphed.

“Couldn’t he have picked a shorter play to torment us with?”

Three rolled her eyes and turned her attention to Seven instead.

“Seven, you have to speak up more. You have such a soft voice I can barely hear you over Four’s thoughts,” she teased.

“Maybe it would help if we switch roles?” Seven replied tentatively. It was true; she was more like Ismene than Antigone in demeanor. From what they’d read, it seemed to her that defiant, headstrong Antigone suited her sister’s brighter stage presence more.

“But we need to practice outside our comfort zones if we want to get any better,” she insisted. “You _do_ want to get better, don’t you?”

Seven stared at her in resignation and gave a small nod.

“Dad— _Je m’excuse, Monsieur Monocle_ —isn’t really going to have us put on a show, is he?” Four said. “Not that this isn’t fun and all but he doesn’t strike me as someone who enjoys theatre. Or anything fun, really.”

“There’s nothing wrong with putting in a little effort,” Three said.

“Seems like a lot of trouble to me,” Four replied. He picked up the script. “Who are they burying again?”

“Polynices,” Seven answered him. The vacant expression on his face remained.

“Their brother?” She elaborated. “Son of Jocasta? Started a civil war against their other brother Eteocles who also died from said civil war?”

Four scrunched his nose.

“I thought that was their grandmother?”

“Who, Jocasta? Yeah but she’s also their mom.”

“Huh. And I thought our family was weird,” Klaus said, making Seven pause.

_Was_ their family weirder than the ones in Greek tragedies? She’d never really given it much thought before. They didn’t have parents, not really. They belonged to a man who paid and provided for them but refused to let them call him their father. They had caretakers, like Pogo and Grace, but one was an advanced chimpanzee and the other was a robot.

They all lived together, though, and Sir Hargreeves hadn’t given the slightest indication that he wanted to give them up the way their birth mothers did. Did that make them family?

No. Maybe?

_Don’t families share names?_ She thought to herself. But then again, there _were_ families that didn’t.

Whatever they were, though, Seven was sure theirs wasn’t one of _those_ families—the ones with so much love to share that they didn’t need a common name to know the extent of that love.

_This_ place felt more like a wealthy orphanage that decided to keep them until…

Well, Seven wasn’t really sure what they were there for.

If Sir Hargreeves were to be believed, it was to save the world. But Four was right; she, too, didn’t see how quoting Sophocles would save the world.

“It’s Ancient Greece. Maybe it was normal for them,” Three pointed out.

“But wasn’t that why Oedipus had that whole breakdown?”

Three paused and contemplated aloud:

“Would it be weird if you started dating someone and it turned out you’re related?”

Seven thought it over, thinking about what they’d read about Oedipus.

“I…guess it depends on the circumstances? But I don’t think I’d gauge out my eyes over it,” she replied.

“Why the sudden interest? Looking at anyone in particular? Asking for a friend?” Four grinned at them, wagging his eyebrows at them cheekily.

“Okay, _first_ : no. No one in this family is even remotely on my level,” Three said haughtily, but the blush that dusted her cheeks betrayed her.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” Four muttered under his breath, causing Three to shoot a glare at his direction.

“And second,” she carried on, “is that I don’t even think any of us are related. He told us, remember? We’re like…the Greek gods. Kinda just sprung into existence out of nowhere. At least, _I’m_ like Athena.”

“Oho! Really distinguishing yourself from us mere mortals there, are you?”

“But of course,” Three jumped on, adopting the most queenly voice she could muster. “We are but children of pure essence and purpose.”

“Or seafoam and severed testicles.”

Three whacked a pillow in his direction. _“Gross_ , Four!”

_“Ouch!_ Hey! ‘ _I was born to join in love, not hate—that is my nature_ ’! What happened to that, huh? Thought you’d love the Aphrodite connection!”

“What, just because I’m a girl? And that was _Seven’s_ line, not mine.”

Seven furrowed her brows in confusion.

“What’s wrong with being Aphrodite? I think you’d make a pretty good goddess of beauty.” Three smiled at her fondly.

“She’s not like Athena, though. Athena is a _warrior_ goddess. She isn’t _just_ pretty. She’s wise and crafty and _good_ .” Three sighed dreamily. Seven, who distinctly remembers their lessons on Arachne and the Trojan war, felt inclined to disagree with that last sentiment. “She can turn _any_ situation in her favor.”

“If _I_ were a god,” Four interjected. “I’d be Shiva. He’s the coolest. Terrific dancer, can’t be created or destroyed, _and_ generally just has a good time. A _really_ good time but let’s leave that discussion for when you’re a little older,” he winked at them both.

“What do you—” Seven started to ask but was interrupted by Three.

“What about you, Seven?” She asked her.

“Oh. I guess I’ve never really thought about it.” To be a god was a lot of responsibility in Seven’s eyes. To be a god was to be _special_ , to have people look up to you because there was something only you could do. Gods knew their nature and let themselves be consumed by it—no, they _were_ their natures. They _were_ the embodiment of wisdom and beauty and destruction. Could _she_ be as wise as Athena, who knew how to play out a battle like she was born for it? Could _she_ ferry souls from one plane of existence to the next?

_No_ , her traitorous mind told her. _No, you’re just Seven._

She wasn’t the smartest or strongest or even the funniest. She knew, deep in her young heart, that no matter what she tried, there would always be someone who would best her.

It was fortunate that their next scene was macabre, with how her thoughts quickly put a damper on her mood. Her siblings didn’t seem to notice, too busy with setting the scene for Antigone to haul the corpse of her dead brother in Three’s trunk, which Four had at some point taken directorial liberties with and insisted that they use to navigate through harsh, Greek shores.

“The dead aren’t supposed to talk, Four,” Three said, exasperated at him for repeatedly rising from his corner of the trunk.

“Say, you’d give me a proper burial if one of us ends up killing me, though, right?”

“Keep asking and it’ll be sooner than you think.”

“ _Boo_. I bet Seven would. You would, won’t you, Seven?” He pouted at Seven, who could only give a half-hearted giggle at his antics.

“Of course, my dear Polynices,” she said solemnly. “But first we must overcome these Greek shores to put your soul to rest!”

“I don’t know, I don’t trust that gloomy look in your eyes,” Four said, putting a hand over his heart. “Sister, you look _grave_ for someone who’s on her way to dig one. Perhaps it’s better to let the sea swallow me whole instead of seeing you suffer!”

He made such a pitiful state that Seven couldn’t help but laugh along with him and Three, feeling lighter already.

“Shhh! Do you feel that?” He asked, eyes alight with mischief.

“What? What is it, dear brother?” Seven leaned in to ask.

“I feel…I _feel_ …I feel a _wave_ crashing down our boat!” He said shaking the sides of their trunk and tipping them dramatically on one side to the next.

“Oh dear, oh dear! My poor brother’s corpse!” Seven cried out between peals of laughter, gripping on to the sides as the pair of them rocked their makeshift boat on invisible waters.

Distantly, she heard Three gasp, but they ignored it as Four cried out: “a storm is brewing on the horizon! You must abandon me now or forever be trapped in the depth of its wreckage!”

“I’ll never let go, Jack!” She cried out with a grin, earning a howl of laughter from Four.

“Then grab my hand, sister, and you may use my corpse to float yourself to the nearest island!”

“Wait, watch out, you guys!” Three warned, but the pair had already jumped out of their makeshift boat…

…and landed three feet unto the ground.

* * *

“—would never use stairs again! I am _so_ gonna smoke you guys at relays without breaking a sweat!” Four crowed to the rest of them as they made their way from the dormitories to their first class on Thursday.

“That’s cheating and we’d beat you anyway,” Two informed him.

“ _Five_ cheats and Dad lets him get away with it! I’m going to literally _breeze through_ our practicals,” Four declared.

“ _No_ , you wouldn’t, because you can barely even get past _me_ when we’re doing stair drills,” Three pointed out. Four tutted at her.

“Not _yet_ . Just you wait, this guy’s going to be the next _Numero Tres_. Your friendly neighborhood fly guy!”

“Or girl. It could have been Seven,” Three reminded him. If he had paid attention, he would have noticed the sharpness to her tone, though whether it was out of defense for Seven or offense she took at the suggestion that Four would surpass her, Seven wasn’t completely sure.

But Four seemed deaf to anything other than the sound of his own voice.

“I’d never have to walk anywhere again! Do you know what this _means_?”

“That you could actually be useful at something for once?” Two suggested.

“ _Shoes_ , Two! It means freedom from _shoes_ and _mud_ and getting my legs tired.”

“You sure you didn’t just start floating because your head’s full of hot air?”

“Of course not! The _trunk_ floated, not me. It was like…” Four trailed off, glancing beyond them in a feat of theatrics.

“Kind of like being on a boat if the water was made of air,” Seven supplied.

“Exactly! Like the way we were pretend-playing this scene…”

Three sent a long-suffering look at Seven, who could only nod along half-heartedly as her brother continued to regale them with whatever stream of consciousness came out of his mouth.

Seven, for the most part, thought that it _would_ be nice for it to have been her. In fact, she would have loved nothing more in the world than to have been the one to make them float with her powers. But everything seemed distant and the act of rising from the ground and the sensation coming from _her_ didn’t quite…click.

So in theory, it _could_ have been her.

_But it’s likelier for it to be someone else_ , she thought, settling her schoolbag by her desk as the other children did the same. Number Six’s seat next to hers remained empty as he wandered to where One was to look over his notes while Number Four lounged on the edge of Two’s desk, preening at the attention he was getting from the small crowd.

“Alright then, big shot. Try knocking this bottle over,” Two challenged, setting it on his desk with a _thud_.

Four stared at him, unsure for a moment, before taking on an air of false bravado.

Everyone in the room was watching closely now, and Seven could feel her heartbeat pick up in apprehension as Four reached over with his hand…

…and tipped the bottle off the desk like an overgrown cat.

Seven felt a knot loosen in her stomach.

_He can’t do it_ , she realized. _Does this mean…?_

“With your _powers_ , you moron,” Two heckled. His eyes caught a glint as he appraised the paler boy. “Or maybe you can’t?”

“Oh— _ha ha_ —yeah, see, I haven’t really had time to _practice_ since last night?” Four tried—but failed—to hide his nervousness. “Preparation is half of the show, you know.”

Two raised an eyebrow, gesturing at the bottle as if to say “well here’s your chance”.

Four sighed, closing his eyes and clenching his fists.

“It wobbled!” He said, peeking a bit with his left eye.

Two scoffed. “Barely.”

“But it _moved_. You guys saw it, right?” Four asked, meeting everyone’s gaze. Two remained unimpressed, One looked distantly concerned, and Three made a non-committal noise.

_It could have been the wind_ , Seven thought but was somewhat relieved. Was it bad to feel happy about someone else’s failure? She tried to stifle the hope that was building in her.

“I take back what I said. This is pathetic and you’re still useless,” Two decided.

“What’s useless?” Five said, materializing into the spot by his desk between Four’s and Six’s.

“Oh, hey Five! Haven’t you heard? I have floating powers!”

“Or Seven,” Three reminded him. Five glanced back at Seven, who gave him a small wave.

“When did that happen?” He asked curiously. Three stepped in before Four could start another tirade.

“We were playing— _practicing_ parts for this week’s reading. There’s this scene where Antigone buries her brother and Four and Seven went in my trunk and it started to float!”

“And _I_ was just in the middle of practicing my floating powers—”

“It’s called telekenisis.”

“Not like he can use it.”

Four and Two started talking over themselves again while Five looked at Seven for confirmation.

_No one’s sure whose powers that was?_ He seemed to ask her.

She held his gaze, eyes flicking over to Six for a while as well.

She nodded. _No one._

Her shot at having powers of her own went unsaid.

“Well, then, I hope it’s Seven,” Six said sincerely, earning a smile from her.

“ _Six!_ How could you say that? Where’s your loyalty to _La Fraternité?_ ” Four whined.

“She’s less likely to drop water balloons over our beds, for one.”

“Pssh. Like I’d need powers for that,” Four grumbled.

He calmed down after Grace came in for their morning class and proceeded with their lessons. But Seven’s couldn’t focus much on what their personal robot was droning on about and found her thoughts drifting away as their lessons inched by.

Eyes almost glassy, she let her gaze wander the room.

There was a new leaderboard at the back of the classroom. The old one just had drawings of themselves that moved up and down the board according to their numbers. Every time they’d do well in one thing or another, they were rewarded with a shiny, chromatic sticker on their row. Grace had even started making a game of it to see who could get extra desserts and the pick of toys for the month.

The new board, however, was less cartoonish. Gone was the velcroed embroidery cut-outs of their faces. It had been replaced with a sleeker board with their numbers fixed on the left side and their achievements for the week on the right. Grace had also added new stickers to the board; classroom achievements, the boring ones that anyone can do with enough diligence, were awarded the usual star.

_Milestones_ , they were told, were awarded umbrella stickers.

At the bottom of the board, her number only had stars and it made her uneasy.

It wasn’t that she was jealous, really. She had twice as many stickers on her board as Four and even a bit more than Six and Two. But Two had gotten an umbrella for clearing last Friday’s obstacle course in under five minutes and Six had _powers_.

And she was happy for them. She really was. But ever since the rankings had been released, everything felt…off. Like they’d been equal before, despite how much they bickered, but now they weren’t. There was a hierarchy and they _all_ knew their place in it.

No one had to say it to know it was there. It was in how Seven felt shy talking about numbers and rankings with Three, who was very proud of her performance. It was in how whenever her sister helped her practice or revise, there was an underlying tone of her helping get Seven to _their_ level. Like she was somehow beneath them. She was sure she didn’t mean to, but she could see in how Six sends her tentative looks that he was going through a similar thing with One’s enthusiasm in preparing pointers for him as well.

And don’t get her wrong, Three was plenty helpful and supportive. Most days, she could easily infect Seven with her optimism despite the slight embarrassment that came with knowing you aren’t great at something.

Bless her, but Three was… _Three_ . She always felt the need to push herself. She didn’t just have opinions, she had _strong_ ones, while Seven sometimes felt like she had no thoughts of her own at all. Like a blank slate. And sometimes she couldn’t help but wonder if it was always going to be like this or if she just needed to somehow grow into something more interesting than she is.

In just a few weeks, the board had become the most significant thing in the household for the Hargreeves children.

Aside from the implications of the rankings on their status in the family, there were actual benefits associated with the new system. Living arrangements, allowances, access to certain areas, and leniency in rules all depended on the clearance their accumulated stickers merited them. And while Pogo had been tight-lipped about the extent of these benefits, the children were already buzzing with excitement over the possibilities with the little information already presented to them.

Any activity from sports and stealth to creativity was picked up with much more enthusiasm by the children in a bid to make it their own, with varying levels of success.

One’s place on the board, for example, was well-decorated with these glittering stamps of approval, with Two falling only slightly behind. It was another thing about the new system: behavior was also monitored and rewarded. And while this meant that Two’s tenacity in the training room was impeded by his own tendency for outbursts the way Five’s did his, it meant that Seven’s diligence had the opportunity to fill some stickers in her place on the board. It was a small comfort compared to the strides everyone else seemed to make.

Five’s row in the board was almost full by the time the rest of them had even reached a quarter of theirs, barring One. It came as no surprise when Sir Hargreeves announced certification of his mental acuity.

And with it, the changes in his curriculum.

She hasn’t seen Five in a while. Unlike the rest of them, Five had been put on a special track that suited his pace more. It was only the humanities and physical drills that Sir Reginald refused to excuse him from attending with the others. In a rare display of approval, the man had made good on his word about rewarding commendable achievements, and Five had jumped on the opportunity to move to quieter quarters that allowed him to think away from the constant chaos of their hallways.

Five, as he was wont to do with all his triumphs, took pride in his success. It was ironic how his rejection of the rankings and drive to prove it wrong only fed the competition between the siblings even further.

For all his standoffishness, though, Seven couldn’t help but miss his presence. Out of all of them, he was probably the one person who was willing to talk about anything without pressing her about rankings and powers the way everyone seemed to be doing.

If she were to be honest, there was an almost palpable solidarity between the lower numbers that the higher numbers just didn’t seem to be invited to. It was one that Five enjoyed constantly disrupting with his complete disregard of their rankings (though admittedly he does this by being equally cross with everyone and making disparaging remarks on their intellect regardless of what number had been assigned to them).

Maybe she should spend more time around him at the classes they still shared. He never liked their classical studies but he didn’t seem to mind her retellings the way she sat through his near-constant stream of scientific jargon and didn’t push her when she preferred to sit in silence.

With that thought in mind, she trailed after the boys as they filed out for snacks before their next class. They only had physical training in the afternoons on Thursdays, with their second period being their last one on any of the humanities for the rest of the day, which meant that this was likely the soonest she could talk to him.

She could hear raised voices as she turned around the corner on the way to the kitchens.

“Oh, you’re just jealous _you_ don’t have any budding powers, _Number Two_.”

The sharp retort was followed by a thick lull in her brothers’ bickering, betraying the delicacy of its subject. Everyone knew how sensitive the matter was to the former Number One, who had taken the rankings much worse than any of them had. Where the new Number One had taken to his new role with enthusiasm and glowed under the positive feedback from Sir Hargreeves, Two had been upset and eager to prove himself the worthier of the pair.

“A-at least _I_ d-don’t need powers to climb a flight of stairs without c-coughing up a lung,” he said, glaring at Four, his lisp betraying how close his words had hit home

“Having powers means you won’t need to. Dad doesn’t care if you have practice hitting your goals a hundred times a week! Fifteen minutes using powers buys you, like, half a week’s worth of stars.”

“But having pow- _ers_ doesn’t mean you can opt-out of t-t- _training_. How else are you going to build technique?”

“Who needs technique if you have raw power?”

“You _always_ need t-technique. What good are powers if you have no control over them? No offense, Six.”

Six, while normally mild-mannered, scowled as he definitely took offense.

“If technique is so important, why aren’t you One? Because One can do the things you can but you can’t bench-press an eight-wheeler!” He snapped. Four let out a low whistle.

“He’s got you there, you know,” Four jeered.

“Then in that case, maybe _you_ should be Seven, considering how useless _you_ are!”

Seven’s ears prickled as she looked up at them with large, disbelieving eyes. They didn’t really think that, did they? That she was, somehow, the useless one out of all of them? She’d never minded her number before but she didn’t like the tone they were speaking it with.

“No, _you_ are. No powers _and_ no brain! Must be some kind of record,” Four taunted.

“No way, _you’re_ way more of a Seven than I am! You’re too mean to be Number Two.”

She looked around them, trying to catch their eye with a stern glare, but she was much smaller prey than the ones right in front of them. Even Six barely spared her a glance as they threw around her number at each other as if it were a slur.

“Seven, Seven, _Seven!_ ”

No, she didn’t like it at all.

She could feel her cheeks redden with embarrassment, eyes stinging as even as she resolutely avoided looking at any of them.

She pushed past Two to grab a snack from the fridge, slamming it close as she stormed back out of the kitchen.

“I’m guessing she heard you.” She heard Five remark as she went past.

“We weren’t—this wasn’t _about_ her. And besides, why was she eavesdropping anyway?”

“Might have something to do with you polluting the corridors with your noise.”

She didn’t linger, trying to hold back angry tears as she marched back to the classrooms. She kept her head down and tried to focus on something else instead of how the other children had mocked each other of being _Seven_ —like she was something embarrassing to _be_. She took no notice of how the lights flickered as she went past, and maybe it was for that reason that she didn’t notice Pogo peeking out of his office before she all but ran into him.

“ _Oof_ ,” he said just as she gave a small apology.

He peered at her from behind his round glasses. “Is something the matter, Miss Seven?”

Her face scrunched up at the number.

“N-no,” she mumbled.

“Ah,” he said. “And I suppose it just happened to rain indoors,” he said knowingly, raising a furry hand to her face, wiping away a tear.

She bit her lip and didn’t say anything, but her gaze went back to the kitchens. Pogo pursed his lips.

“I see,” he said. “Perhaps a glass of water would do you some good. Have you taken your medicine yet?” He asked, leading her into his office.

She shook her head _no_ , not trusting herself to be able to say anything cohesive as she breathed erratically, shoulders shaking from barely-repressed sobs.

Pogo’s office was similar to Sir Reginald’s in that it had tomes upon tomes covering every available space, though he certainly had more of a filing system in place than the old man’s. It was easy to mistake it as an archive or a library itself, rather than a place for the chimpanzee to rest.

Still, Seven’s been there enough times for her to associate the forest of filing cabinets with comfort.

“I’ll speak to the boys about their behavior,” he told her gently. “They should know better than to upset you, given your condition.” He tutted as she took the pill he offered and washed it down with a tall glass of water.

It took a few minutes for it to take effect, but she did feel better once she emptied the glass. Refreshed, but with the ache in her dulled to almost an afterthought.

Pogo let her finish her snack in his office before letting her go. By the time she made it back to class, Grace had already set up the lecture slides and everyone else was already seated.

“We have a fun little exercise for today, children! We’ll be observing and creating natural pigments as a lab activity so I’d like you all to pair up now. Yes, Seven?” Grace paused as the little girl raised her hand.

“Can I switch partners? I don’t think Six would want to work with a _Seven_ ,” she said, not minding the bluntness of her tone.

Distantly, she thinks she saw Six cringe but couldn’t bring herself to care. Her medicine did this, sometimes, when her emotions were being brought down to baseline; she’d have moments of eerie calm that made her feel removed from the situation. She was calm now and she didn’t have to put up with things that would just upset her.

Grace regarded her with a patient smile. “Alright, but count this as your final seating arrangement for the rest of the year. Are you sure?” With Five’s changing schedule, it often meant that Six and Seven were paired together, occasionally working as a trio to even out the odd number of their class, but in his absence, it would mean that Seven would be on her own.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, already gathering her things to move to Five’s table.

“Right. So as you may know, the colors available to us now haven’t always been that way. The brightness and rarity of some pigments fueled movements in art and trade…”

* * *

Five, on the other hand, was more than okay with this new arrangement.

Being a _certified_ genius—he was still very much smug about that—Five had always had a different way of interacting with the other children. Sometimes he’d talk to them while they nod along, thinking they were keeping up with him. But then they’d complain to him how he jumped from one topic to another and he’d stare at them like they were stupid because they were still talking about _one_ thing that just had many points to it.

It was, frankly, frustrating at times when all he had to talk to were _children_. Never mind that they were of the same age! Most of them could barely keep up and he got tired of explaining things just to get mocked for it. But the adults never wanted to talk to him for long, with Pogo always busy on Hargreeves’s service and Grace being…well, a robot.

And they didn’t really get his jokes and, more often than not, they made him feel _weird_ . Which, by the way, was unfair because he had a _wicked_ sense of humor if they all weren’t just too stupid to catch it.

While he appreciated that he could get as rough as he wanted with the boys, sometimes it was all he could do not to throw a punch to the wall when one of them claimed to “discover” something that was completely _elementary_. Especially One, when he’d try to “teach” any of them.

Four, in particular, liked to taut his “discoveries”. Specifically, in their lab rooms, where he thought that mixing one piece of junk with another was “creating something extraordinary!” And by god, can he whine. To Five, all this did was make a mess and leave him with extra work to pull something together for a decent grade.

So honestly? Seven was a _blessing_.

Sure, she was a crybaby. But she was also a crybaby that let him work in peace. And, unlike the rest of them, _Five_ was plenty more mature than any of them combined so she wouldn’t cry nearly as much as she did because of the other children.

And she’ll probably grow out of it. Maybe.

As it were, the class went by smoothly for Five, with Seven pulling her own weight. Apparently, she was about as well-read as Six, pitching in on the significance of certain textiles and dyes on the matters of trade and commerce during the Renaissance. Five had never been interested in the humanities as much as their adoptive father would like him to be, but Seven was fascinated with the sociological nuances of long-dead societies. It was probably why she was so sensitive to interpersonal relationships.

“Nice to get work done without having to throttle Four for once,” he stretched his arms happily, setting down his pen as Seven proofread their report. She had another sheet of paper beside it as she jotted down their final copy, occasionally staring into space as she did so.

Her eyes weren’t swollen anymore, he noted. She must have rinsed it off because Seven tended to get bags under her eyes after she cried.

“You okay?” He asked after she’d gone quiet for too long.

“Y-yeah. I guess.” She didn’t look up from their paper, though.

“Mhm.”

Still nothing.

“That was probably the quickest time I’ve had in a lab activity,” he commented.

“I don’t know about that. You probably get a lot more done on your own, now,” she said lightly.

Five nodded. He does, but…

“It’s quiet,” he admitted, glancing around the quiet lull among his siblings between their shared tables.

“I bet. It’s weird not to have you around, though.”

He returned his gaze to her, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He wasn’t lonely. Not by a long shot. But it was always nice to know you were missed.

“Better than having them take cheap shots at me, you know? Don’t have to look at their stupid faces when they trip over their own ignorance,” he said casually, watching her carefully. _Come on. Take the bait._

Seven looked up at him, then glanced back at where Four, Six, and Two seemed to be arguing in low voices along with Three.

“They can be really mean sometimes,” she said. _There she is._

“I wouldn’t mind them too much, you know. It’s just typical ape behavior,” he said, feeling the beginnings of his playful snark on the tip of his tongue.

He didn’t get the chance to act on it, though, as Six abruptly rose from his seat, dragging Four with him.

“Hey, Seven?” The shorter boy asked, approaching their table tentatively. Four wouldn’t stop fidgeting behind him, crossing his arms, uncrossing them, and re-crossing them again.

Seven shared a look with Five. _What do you think?_

Five shrugged.

“What is it?” She directed at the other two instead.

“Well, I was… _we’re_ here to, uh. Apologize,” Six said, looking awkward as he did so. “We didn’t mean for you to hear that.”

It was a commendable effort in Five’s opinion, but apparently it was the wrong thing to say, judging by the frown on Seven’s face.

Six must have thought so too, tumbling through his next words.

“And, um. _Sorry_ ,” he stressed, trying to find his footing. “Because…because you’re mad and you switched seats.”

_Uh oh_.

Seven raised an unbelieving eyebrow at him, staring at Six, then at Four, leaning awkwardly by Five’s side of the table, and then back at Six.

It wasn’t hard to follow her thoughts, as proven by Four when he blurted out:

“Wait, are we doing this just so you can trade me back?”

“No!” Six cried. Then, he paused. “Well, yes. But also because you’re mad,” he rushed to insist at Seven, who seemed to be thinking it over.

“Okay,” she said, nodding to herself. “I’m not mad anymore—”

Six perked up, looking relieved.

“—but you still have to sit with Klaus.”

Six cursed. “But you _just_ said you aren’t mad! You can’t accept someone’s apology _and_ punish them. It’s either I apologize _or_ get punished.”

Everyone was looking at them, even as they tried to keep their voices down. Five could see Three trying to pretend to work on their own report, not noticing how Seven stared after her for strength of some kind before coming to a decision herself.

“I don’t like how you talked about me,” she said firmly.

“We weren’t talking about you, we were talking about your number! Come _on_ , Ven! It’s just a number. You don’t have to take it so personally.”

“But it’s not just today,” Seven scowled. “ What’s so bad about being Seven? _I’m_ Seven. And you’re always grouping with each other now, like some kind of club we’re not allowed into.”

Six was finding it very difficult to deal with this newfound stubborn side to Seven. He shot Five a pleading look.

_Man, I don’t know either, but I’ll try._

“Club’s not worth it,” Five interjected. “Honestly, half the time I feel like Jane Goodall watching them. Just let the chimps sit with the chimps, Seven.”

“Excuse me?” Six said, offended. _Seriously,_ that’s _how you help?_

Five was unapologetic. _I’m trying here._

Four, unaware of the silent conversation happening in front of him, let out a derisive snort.

“DadBot.exe strikes again!” He jeered. “You know, you should really come with a translation program. No one understands half the things that come out of your mouth.”

_God almighty,_ this _is how you repay me for my kindness?_

Five’s patience wore thin.

“I’ll help you fly across this room by your necktie,” he warned him in a deliberately pleasant tone.

“Geez, you have the emotional stability of a pregnant woman.”

Five narrowed his eyes and started to run the math. Four was on his table. If he were to jump through space to deliver a kick to his head, how much room from his back would he need to make it in one blow?

Seven must have caught the buzzing of the spatial energy gathering at his hands. She gave his arm a gentle squeeze. _Don’t_.

“If you’re so special, why don’t they just cart you off to a special school for geniuses or something? Do us all a favor and save our kneecaps. Maybe you can be friends with other grumpy robots in disguise…like a Transformer!” Four gasped, as if in revelation.

“Now that I think about it, Five _could_ be a robot alien. It’d make sense! We can even call you an Optimus _Prime._ ”

“Stop being mean,” Seven surprised him with the intensity of her tone. “We’re _already_ in a special school. Besides, it wouldn’t be the same without Five, so just drop it.”

Where she seemed almost disaffected before, she now sounded truly angry, like the very thought of Five being a pariah was sacrilegious. It was so unlike her that Four seemed to wither from the strength of her glare, mumbling an apology.

_Yeah_ , Five thought. He really _did_ like having Seven around.

“I still can’t believe you tried to _trade_ me. _Moi!_ I am a _delight_ ,” she could hear him complain to Six, who trailed behind him back to their seats after shooting her and Five a sheepish look.

Seven sighed, returning to the last line of their report.

“I could’ve done that myself, you know,” he said as casually as he could.

“Why didn’t you?” She didn’t miss a beat.

Five hesitated, thinking it over. How could he best describe it to someone who didn’t know how it was to be him?

“It gets tiring to always explain every little thing. And they don’t really…they always treat it like some kind of joke at my expense.”

Out loud, the confession didn’t seem as heavy as it were to him. Or new, for that matter. But it _was_ exhausting. Every single thought he had, he was waiting for them to catch up. They were always learning ten years behind him and the lag in communication felt like he was sending a signal from a control station on Earth to the other side of Mars, where it would take 20 minutes for him to know if any of his jokes would land.

Seven, to her credit, just rolled with it.

She peered at him curiously, stapling the pages of their report together. “What _did_ you mean earlier? Promise I won’t make fun of you.”

Five met her earnest gaze. _She really wouldn’t_ , he realized, followed by a greater, more incredible awareness; she didn’t have to say it for him to _know_ she wouldn’t. Not about something like this.

He could trust her.

“You know that old film, the Planet of the Apes?” He started. Seven shook her head but listened attentively. “It’s about these astronauts that crash-land on a planet that’s like…eighty-percent Pogo, but several of him, from different species. There are three main ape species and whenever there was a break on set, the actors would only sit with people in the same ape costumes as theirs. The gorillas had gorilla friends, the orangutans hung out with orangutans and…”

“…the chimps sit with the chimps,” she finished for him.

“Yeah.”

“So _that’s_ why you mentioned Jane Goodall.”

“You caught that?” He asked, pleasantly surprised.

“Her biography’s on the top shelf of the library,” Seven explained. “Pogo probably put it there,” she added as an afterthought.

“Seven. That’s racist.”

There was something in the dead-pan way he said it that had her burst into laughter. And there was something in making _her_ laugh that made _him_ feel inordinately pleased.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't playing around with that Childhood tag. You'll get to watch the Hargreeves kids grow up but it's gonna be a gradual build-up to the plot. If I have enough discipline, I can limit the childhood chapters to about 3 per year (this one and the last still set around the time they're 8 years old). The plot and action pick up around their teenage years but for now, I offer you prepubescent drama.
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments!


	3. Faith, Trust, and Sabotage

It was always a busy day in the Umbrella Academy but somehow Friday didn’t seem to be over for Seven just yet.

In the corner of her bedroom, where she had previously been reenacting lines from Sophocles with Three and Four, stood intrepid Number Five, who was standing over the trunk Three had left in her room. As it was past 15:30 and they technically weren’t due until supper, it was the perfect time for them to test out Seven’s possible powers, the boy had argued. He had succeeded in convincing Seven that it was perfectly acceptable for them to skip out on study hall since Seven was already done with hers and Five could finish it his in less than an hour.

Seven sat cross-legged on her bed, a few feet between her and the trunk while Five waited expectantly with a notebook in his hand. The gesture reminded her of Sir Hargreeves, in a way, and while she couldn’t help but feel slightly nervous at the prospect of being evaluated, it helped that Five made his thoughts clear. Whether it was asking her to try moving from the front of the trunk or otherwise just throwing out comments to himself, she didn’t have to put up with the silent judgment that always accompanied Sir Hargreeves whenever he had his own red notebook out.

In fact, Five wouldn’t shut up.

He was constantly asking her if this or that felt right, what if they tried it from a different angle, maybe she needed to keep her eyes closed…?

(“We should try to recreate the initial conditions as closely as possible,” he decided at one point, looking at her and nodding to the trunk expectantly. “Get in, Seven.”

“Do we have to do everything we did?” She asked as she climbed into the trunk. “Because Klaus was with me and we were rocking it like a boat.”

“Good point. Budge over.”

And they would go on like that for a while until the trunk would tip over from the momentum, sending both of them to the floor with all the grace of discarded laundry.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Five snorted lightly.

Seven let out a groan in response.

“I suck at this,” she said.

“You’re just nervous.” Five said, using his elbow to prop himself up from the floor. “You get easily embarrassed when someone looks at you too long like a spooked deer. ”

“Can we focus less on calling me names and more on helping me?” Seven retorts, stretching her hands out to him in a silent prompt to pick her up.

“I _am_ helping you,” he replied. He looked over at her in amusement but doesn’t help her up. She pouts and sits up instead so that she’s hugging her knees. “Ah! Maybe you can close your eyes and pretend I’m not here?”)

Maybe he was just excited. Maybe he was delighted at being in charge of something for once. Whatever it was, the boy’s constant stream of quips and comments helped ease a lot of nervousness Seven was feeling. Rather than feeling like an animal put on display, _this_ experiment felt like a simple conversation with a friend.

Truth be told, the reason why it was just the two of them in the room was that at a gut-level, Seven wasn’t as afraid about messing up in front of Number Five as she was of losing, say, Number Three’s respect. While she had no doubt that Three would want to help, it just felt different when Three always strived for perfection.

Idly, she wonders if Three could be like this. Both she and Five put in a lot of effort into improving themselves but where Allison was diligent, Five was laid-back and intuitive.

She supposed he didn’t have to try particularly hard anyway, considering everything just seemed to come to him naturally.

“Guess we can check concentration off the list. That was a commendable impression of a squirrel swallowing a lemon,” said Five, not even having the decency to pretend not to laugh at her.

She takes it back. Five is an irredeemable jerk.

“You try it!” She said, feeling her cheeks grow warm. “It’s kind of hard to take this seriously. How do you do it with your powers?”

Five made a non-committal noise.

“May not be the best to answer that. Mine _needs_ control. I have to be very specific and intentional otherwise I’d end up trapped between the rafters again,” he explains. “But it’s not always like that, is it? Some things need you to just let them do their thing. Just look at Six.”

He stared into empty space for a moment before perking up.

“What if you don’t _have_ to force yourself to concentrate?” He says excitedly.

Seven squinted at him skeptically. Of course she had to concentrate. If she could do it without concentrating—use her powers, that is—then shouldn’t she have been making things happen by now? Like how Luther would sometimes bend their training equipment out of shape in the heat of the moment or how Three would sometimes will something into existence while reading a magazine to herself?

Five catches her expression and goes: “no, hear me out. You were playing—oh don’t start, I _know_ that wasn’t homework—when you and Four got the trunk moving, weren’t you? How did you feel then?”

“Happy. Bubbly,” she added when Five raised an eyebrow at her to prompt her to elaborate.

He snaps a finger.

“ _Bubbly_. High-spirited. And later, the trunk started _rising_. So, working theory: maybe your powers are tied to your _emotions_.”

Seven leaned back, thinking it over.

She supposed it could happen. She started recounting as many incidents as she could but try as she might, her memories of her own emotions didn’t really match with anything that could possibly be supernatural. Not to her, anyway.

And the more she thought about it, the more fanciful it seemed. Thinking of happy thoughts in order to fly? It sounded like it was taken right out of Peter Pan.

Faith, trust, and pixie dust.

She could already hear Sir Hargreeves’s derisive snort in the distance.

“What if it doesn’t work?” She said, breaking the silence.

Five, to his credit, didn’t miss a beat. “Then we look at our initial conditions, check which variables we can change, and then try again.”

Seven shot him a look. _You know that’s not what I mean._

Five shrugged. It was really all he could think of for them to do. After all, it was how Sir Hargreeves conducted his own studies on them: using multiple tests. It seemed to work well enough for him.

Seven continued to fidget, clasping and unclasping her hands on her lap.

“Five, if I don’t have powers…do you think the Planet of the Apes thing would happen?” She asked, keeping her eyes firmly on her hands to avoid checking Five’s expression. It was always easy to tell how he felt, and right now she didn’t really want to know.

He rolled his eyes at her.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “It’s more likely for you to have powers than not.”

“How can you be sure?” She hugged her knees closer to her chest.

“Uh, because it’s obvious?” He said in a tone that implied that he couldn’t believe they were wasting time on this but Seven didn’t pay him any attention in favor of burying her face into her arms.

“No one would want to sit with me,” she mumbled.

“Don’t worry about that. Come on, we have to move on to the next trial.”

She felt Five grow silent when it became apparent that she wasn’t planning to get up any time soon.

Then, she felt a small hand pulling at her hair with one sharp tug. The sting had her looking at him in disbelief, before turning away in annoyance.

“Not _no one,”_ he chastised. “The director noticed, didn’t he? He sat with them.”

He didn’t let go. What he _did_ do was to bring the ends of her hair up to her face so that Seven could feel the bristly texture poking at her like a particularly irritating fly.

Seven swatted futilely at his hand.

“And besides,” he continued, only dropping his hands once she looked up to glare at him. “Once they were done with filming, they probably went to sit with their actual friends.”

She stared at him sullenly.

Normal people had normal families and friends to go home to.

Right.

And that was the end of it, she thought, when Five moved away and started to haul the trunk back to its place, saying something unintelligible as he did.

“What was that?” She asked.

“I _said_ I’d sit with you _anyway_ ,” he repeated a little too loudly. “It’s not like there’s a rule against it. And even if there was, it’s not like I’d listen to him. Besides, the likes of Pogo make for more interesting company than O— _Two_ ’s incessant chatter about the finer points of costuming.”

She watched him struggle with heaving the trunk upright for a bit before standing up to help him.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You, too,” Seven replied, smiling at him. “Even if you did kinda call me an ape.”

“Operation Spoons, trial three starting _now_ ,” he announced like he didn’t hear her. He rapped on the trunk pointedly.

She restrained from rolling her eyes at his theatrics while she went back in, closing her eyes as she settled more comfortably.

“Don’t think about if it’s possible. Just think about how you feel,” she could hear Five say.

_Okay. Concentrate on your feelings_.

If this _was_ like Peter Pan, then…then she already _has_ the pixie dust, doesn’t she? She reasoned to herself. So all she would need are the other two.

Maybe she could search for her happiest memory?

She tried to remember how it felt to play with Three and Four before this whole fiasco started but to no avail. She was still feeling slightly heavy from her last crying spell before taking her pill today and it made everything feel distant somehow.

Seven scrunched her face in concentration and tried a different approach.

_Trust._ What would count?

She thinks about Grace, at first, because that’s what the books always say. When you think about trust, you think about how soft your Mom is and how she sings you lullabies and loves you unconditionally.

But while Grace sang to them, she certainly wasn’t _soft_ when they hugged her. _Pogo_ was softer. Warmer. Except Seven wasn’t sure if he counted either because Pogo was…Pogo.

_This is going to take forever. How long are we going to keep trying?_ She breathed out a sigh and cracked one eye open by a hair’s width to sneak a look at Five.

He had one arm crossed with his other hand tapping his pen on his cheek, reading through his notes from the past hour.

Seven started to snicker.

Five looked at her and she shut both of her eyes again before he could catch her.

She waited for a minute to pass before sneaking another glance.

The closer Seven looked, the more apparent it became that the boy had no idea that the pen had been drawing lines all over the side of his face.

Seven let out a giggle.

“What?” The boy asked, exasperated. “What’s so funny?”

“You have a little…” she trailed off, gesturing vaguely at his face.

Five reached up to swipe at his face but the harder he tried to rub it off, the more it became a mess of blue splotches, and the redder his cheeks turned.

“Damn it,” he cursed as his chin slowly started to resemble a badly beaten blackberry.

By the time he remembered to get his handkerchief out, Seven was already beside herself with laughter, pressing her hands against her mouth to contain her giggles.

Then the oddest thing happened to Five’s face.

One moment he was glaring at her and the next his eyes went wide in awe.

Puzzled, she followed his line of sight.

“Is that…? Five!” She exclaimed, heart pounding in her chest while she peered over the edge.

The boy walked around her, tapping the trunk and passing a hand through empty space.

“Three feet off the floor,” he confirmed. He shot a pleased grin at her. “Guess Four’s going to lose that bet.”

If Seven hadn’t been elated, she suspected she would have been more upset that. As it were, all her dreams just came true and there was absolutely nothing that could ruin her good mood.

_But still._ Seven scrunched her nose. “Four’s running a bet?”

“Don’t think anyone actually had the money to take him up on it,” Five remarked, unbothered. “Oh! We should probably proceed to trial three.”

Five started to explain other set-ups they could use, rambling about rates of descent and acceleration while Seven was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that _she had powers!_

Distantly, she was aware that she should be paying more attention to what Five was saying, but she found it impossible to concentrate. The afternoon sun painted her room in streaks of gold. The air felt fresh. Even the dreary hum of construction from the other side of the Hargreeves estate sounded like music.

In the distance, she could hear Pogo padding through their side of the building, conversing with a second voice she could only assume was their robot mother.

“Pogo!” She tells Five excitedly, cutting him off mid-spiel.

He blinked at her in confusion.

“What about him?”

“Come on, I want to show him!” She said, climbing down a little awkwardly from where she was hovering. She pulls Five with her to the door and finds Pogo and Grace putting up posters at the other side of the hallway.

“How did you—” Five started only to be drowned out by Seven calling out to the only constant adult figures in their lives.

“Pogo! _Pogo!_ ” She said in a whispered shout, waving at them from the distance.

It catches Grace’s attention, who looks up and waves back at them. She says something to Pogo before moving on to her other tasks, leaving the latter free to walk up the hallway to meet the children.

He’s smartly dressed in his usual outfit consisting of a tweed jacket over a white button-up shirt and suspenders, which was a far more sensible choice than belts for an advanced chimpanzee.

Seven has always liked how he looks like one of the newsies they’d read about in their history class. Pogo is perhaps the only person she knows who wears suspenders, and it was a shame you couldn’t really tell when it’s hidden by his jacket, but she had to admit that the outerwear made him look more official. Like a school teacher, even.

And unlike the various men in black suits that would come in and out of their house to meet with Sir Hargreeves, the suspenders made him look comfortable.

“Master Five. Miss Seven,” he dips his head at them in greeting as he stepped into her room. “Shouldn’t you be preparing to join the others for your independent studies?”

“Three and I already finished our homework yesterday. Five’s helping me today!” She told him, swinging her arms back the way Grace taught them in an effort to remain composed. They weren’t supposed to charge at people with hugs anymore when they were on the clock. It showed a lack of respect for a person’s status, they were told, and she didn’t want to disrespect Pogo.

Still, she could barely keep still from her excitement, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet.

“She’s pretty good at it, from what I’ve seen,” Five adds.

Pogo smiled at them. “Oh? And what mischief are you kids up to?”

Seven stiffens, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden.

“Show him, Seven!” Five nudged at her. “Go on, don’t be shy.”

She looks from him to Pogo, who nodded at her encouragingly. Curiosity colored his gaze when she climbed into the trunk and Seven couldn’t help but feel a little like the street performers she saw on the television the other day.

The girl closed her eyes, scrunched her nose, and thought about what it would be like to show her powers to everyone.

She would get her first umbrella sticker! Allison would be very happy for her and maybe she’d even get to race against the boys.

And sure enough, she started to float just like she did before.

When she opened her eyes, it was to the sound of Pogo clapping.

“Ah,” he said. “That is impressive, indeed.”

She beamed at him, this time making sure to put the trunk down before trying to climb out of it.

“It was hard at first and Five kept pointing out this thing I do with my hands but we talked about it and I think that really helped—” She babbled on, rushing to tell him as much as she could while Pogo listened patiently, asking questions and nodding along while Seven and Five took turns in their story-telling.

“We’re not sure yet. We only got through the first three trials, but Seven responds well to positive reinforcement,” Five explained, swinging his legs as he watched them from Seven’s desk.

“I see.” There was a considering look in his eye that made it almost gleam. Then a moment passed and his leathery face smoothed back to his usual pleasant demeanor, posture straightening as he came to a decision. “It’s good to see you kids getting along so well.”

He smiles at them and for a moment she thinks he’d reach down and smooth her hair over like Grace did sometimes.

Instead, he did something better.

“Now, Sir Hargreeves will be out working through something at the moment but I can clear out his schedule for the evening reminders,” he says to Seven’s surprise.

“Do you think he would really want to see me?” She felt a little breathless. Sir Reginald _never_ let anyone interrupt his working hours. This was…this was _huge_.

“But of course,” Pogo says it as if it were to be expected. “He’d be _very_ interested in what you all get up to if he only had more time to spare. How lucky I am to spend time with you in his absence, though.”

_(Of course_ he’d want to see you. _Of course_ you’re special.)

Vanya smiles, ducking her head down shyly.

“It was really cool, too,” Five chimed in. “We took notes. Well, _I_ took notes while Seven was holding up the trunk.”

Five grabs his notes from Vanya’s desk and jumps to where Pogo was standing to show him.

“These are well-written,” Pogo commended, leafing through the sparse entries but pausing at one page nearer to the end. “Oh, and Number Four?”

“He was there, too, when it happened. We were gonna go look for him. It was mainly Seven’s idea—”

“You said we have to consider _all_ the variables.”

“—but we couldn’t find him,” Five finished.

“You kids definitely know how to keep busy,” Pogo remarked, still flipping through Five’s notes. “I believe Master Four is resting somewhere in the library at the moment.”

Just as Five had a penchant for misusing furniture, so too did Klaus have a habit of taking naps in progressively weirder places. It made it almost impossible for anyone to consistently keep track of him because whenever he did, he slept like the dead.

(As vexing as it was for their caretakers, the other kids usually had fun with it.)

Five perked up but before he could have the chance to do anything, Pogo continued. “…but I think it would be best to leave him to his reflections for a while. I could sense some tension earlier today,” he said, giving them a knowing look.

“Well, don’t let me keep you. Expect to be called down after supper.” He gathered himself and started walking out of the room when he paused at the door.

“Oh, and Master Five?” He said. “I suggest you finish your work before then. I have a feeling that the presentation would leave little time to study.”

* * *

Pogo’s smile faded as soon as the children left his sight. There was much to think about but there wasn’t the time.

He hadn’t been wholly truthful with the children when he said that Sir Reginald was out. But then again, he hasn’t been wholly truthful in a long time. As it were, the brilliant inventor was in his laboratory, hidden from the rest of the house and accessible only through the Televator. It was accessible both through a door from Sir Reginald’s office as well as through Pogo’s own; a connecting room that made it easier for them to attend to their more illicit experiments without stirring attention.

On his way, he thought over the possibility of Number Seven gaining control over her powers. In his mind, this was a cause for celebration. Surely this would mean an end to the underhanded medication if the girl could be trusted to keep her temperament under check. And he was quickly growing fond of Seven by how nice she was growing to be. Even Five, though they had plenty more to talk about, was as deliberately caustic as the other boys.

He wondered sometimes how different things would be if Number Seven had been gifted with a lighter burden like teleportation or super strength.

(Or perhaps it was their luck that it had been someone with her kindness that was gifted with such a destructive force)

He tried to make his case to Sir Reginald (in the gentlest suggestion to see how it would play out) but the man was a tried and true pragmatist. And in all his years of service, he had yet to see the man make an error in judgment.

In his admittedly oddly long life, he had been nothing but loyal to Sir Hargreeves. He was more than a master to him: he was his _maker_. He shaped who Pogo was now, pushing him to reach his potential and giving him opportunities that he would never have received if not for the luck of knowing Reginald Hargreeves.

More than perhaps anyone, Pogo knew that there was more to Sir Reginald’s standoffish nature.

Reginald Hargreeves held his hand from the crate to his first undergraduate degree and even now continued to send him to various conferences and seminars as his appointed Chief of Staff. Beyond his duties as his personal assistant, the shrewd inventor had such belief in him and his abilities that his duties extended to managing his entire estate.

Everything from going over company finances with a fine-toothed comb, keeping property portfolios up to date, and staying ahead of his entrepreneurial ventures. Sir Reginald gave him one of the largest paychecks in the state. If he was ever so inclined, Pogo had no doubt that he could have run off after his first year of service to start his own company or live on a remote island of his choosing, and Sir Reginald wouldn’t have held it against him.

Sir Reginald gave him the means to discover and pursue his dreams. Without his help, he would just be a monkey in a suit. It was only right that he returned the favor. In return for his trust, Pogo ran his household as smoothly as he could, allowing him to spend more time on whatever invention or problem he was trying to solve without worrying about all the troubles that came with being one of the most powerful, well-connected beings in the planet.

Trouble such as drawing unwanted attention from the power-hungry, whose self-interests blinded them from potential.

There was hardly anyone on that operated on the same level as Sir Reginald Hargreeves. If pressed, Pogo could count on a single hand the number of people that had the ability and the will to scratch even the surface of what Hargreeves continues to build. They would never understand the work Hargreeves was putting into the children, and if one of them were to get their hands on any of them…

If _Number Seven_ caught their attention...

No.

They would never understand them. People were so quick to dismiss that which they cannot control—let alone those who cannot control _themselves—_ and Pogo knew tales from his own kind that proved how lasting the damage could be. And he knows his master; he would take control of the situation and reveal the existence of the Umbrella Academy in his own time.

Number Five’s notebook was small and light but in Pogo’s hand had a weight that cannot be attributed to its size.

He thinks about little Number Seven, already growing anxious as the years went by. She was nowhere near ready to bear the world on her shoulders with the rest of her siblings. Perhaps she would never be.

At least, that was what Sir Reginald tells him.

Armed with Five’s notes, Sir Reginald Hargreeves skimmed through the childish scrawl that detailed everything they needed to know about the situation. He nodded and started pulling down old pieces of technology he’d left on the shelves, telling Pogo exactly what he needed to do and a reminder to be discreet.

And Pogo trusts him.

* * *

It took a while for them to be allowed into Sir Reginald’s office.

Everyone was in various states of standing awkwardly outside in the hallway which, unfortunately, had nowhere to sit on. The man didn’t typically accept people into his space unless scheduled otherwise but news traveled fast among the children and everyone was curious enough to trail after them when they learned what was going down.

When it became obvious that they would have to wait for Grace’s arrival to be ushered in, Four sat down on the hardwood floor, making the rest feel awkward about standing up so they followed his lead and started to settle down, too.

Five was left standing over at the other side of the corridor, where he leaned with his back against the railing. Beside him is One, who now always insists on standing at attention even when not necessary.

There was a brief moment of discomfort when Three and Six couldn’t decide where to settle but eventually filled in the space between Four and Seven respectively.

”Is something wrong?” she had asked when they shuffled awkwardly where they stood.

Four snorted.

“Little early for this, isn’t it?” he said. He stretched his arms and folded them behind his head. Closing his eyes, he sighed. “Picking sides. Bet you they’ll be standing all day because they can’t choose,” he said to Seven.

“No one said anything about picking sides,” Three had replied with a huff.

“Speak for yourself,” Two chimed in. He turned to Seven and said, “my money’s on you, just so you know. You got something to show for ten bucks?”

“Um,” Seven had said, unsure how to react.

It was at that point that Three—bless her—pointedly sat down between them and intervened.

”Didn’t see you earlier. Where were you?” The curly-haired girl commented, tucking her skirt under her legs as she sat down. She pulled Six down with her so that they were all lined up against the wall together.

“Oh, I was with Five,” Seven replied. Three tilted her head to the side, not quite frowning but not looking too thrilled.

“Oh?”

“I didn’t want to interrupt you from reviewing,” Seven said. “And Five’s always been good at cramming homework on his own, so…”

She trailed off, not knowing where to go from there. It wasn’t like there was much to it—she simply didn’t feel like seeing the other girl out earlier—but she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she needed to prove that she wasn’t choosing anyone over Three. She was, after all, her best friend.

In any case, the other girl seemed to accept her excuse. She smiled at her and talked to her for a while more about what Three got up to in study hall while Seven was busy trying out her powers with Five until Four roped her deep into conversation about the practicalities of outfits in combat.

Seven watched them, falling silent as she let her siblings’ idle chatter wash over her own amped-up feelings. She felt giddy in a way that was difficult to tell nerves apart from excitement.

_Deep breaths_ , she reminded herself. _Be still. Be calm._

And for once, it worked.

It was easier to beat the fluttering of her heartbeat with the assurance that she did well earlier. She managed to prove something to herself and it gave her a good feeling that was easy to latch on to.

Four, on the other hand, didn’t look so good.

Despite the jubilance of his conversation with Three, his face was gaunt and his hair stuck up at the back in an unruly way. He kept tugging at the ends of his blazer, which barely managed to cover the slept-in state of his clothes.

Seven turned to Six to ask but when she met his gaze where he sat closer Four than usual, the gloomy boy buried his nose in a book he had on hand.

“So?” Two asked her in a low voice, distracting her from feeling miffed. “Are you going to win this thing or what?”

Seven squinted at him.

“I got Three’s trunk to float if that’s what you’re asking,” she said. “But it’s really, really hard.”

Two nodded in approval.

“S’not much o’ a s’prise,” he said. “S’lot farther than Four got to, too. He barely even managed to push it.”

“Oh,” Seven said, surprised. “So he _did_ manage to do something?”

Two shrugs.

“Hard to say. He ditched us after that. At least _you’re_ prepared.”

Seven looks at where Four was huddling with Three, the latter showering him with hushed encouragements. The two girls meet each others’ eyes and Three gives her a flicker of a smile. She nodded at Four’s direction, giving Seven a meaningful glance.

Standing up, she could feel eyes on her even as Three pulls Six away from Four so she could talk to him instead.

“Hey,” she offers him a tiny smile.

“Hey,” he intoned, raising a palm up in greeting. He ran a hand through his hair and let out another sigh.

As she sat down, she thought about what she could say to him.

‘ _So I heard from Two…_ ’

No, that was too callous.

_‘You look tired. Didn’t you get slee—’_

Wait, don’t insult his appearance! That would just make him feel bad.

_Homework! Maybe I can just talk about the last assignment—_

But Four doesn’t even _like_ doing homework. Besides, the boy didn’t look like he was in the mood to talk about linear algebra.

With each second that passed in uneasy silence, she became more and more aware of how she had no idea how to talk to Four.

Luckily, he closes the gap for her.

“Five, huh?” He said. “Three’s a little miffed about not being invited to your little soiree,” he explained, nodding to where Three was.

“Is she?” Seven said. “I didn’t notice.” Four chuckled.

“Frankly, _I’m_ more surprised you manage to get him to help at all,” he says.

“It was more his idea, actually,” she replied. “I’d say it’s his way of trying to get me to stop moping but he liked running the experiment a little too much. Got a notepad and everything.”

“What a nerd,” Four said, snickering. “But at least you got something out of it. Two just laughed at me.”

Seven hummed, lips tight in a smile that was closer to a grimace. She knows how _that_ feels.

“How was it?” She asks.

Four gave her a thumbs down, blowing a raspberry to imitate a fart.

“Well,” Seven says, trying to think of something to console him with. “No wonder. You got help from Two.”

“Wouldn’t call it help,” Four snorted. “It was being like a street magician for a really demanding audience. Unpaid _and_ unappreciated!”

“Did he start bossing you around like Dad does, too?”

“He started throwing M&Ms at me when I made mistakes!” Four exclaimed. “He’s like a mean little drill sergeant. _So_ glad he isn’t in charge.”

“He and Five could share notes,” she said. “You know he was all up in my case earlier? It felt a _lot_ like dad’s drills.”

“Next they’ll be trying on a monocle and growing a mustache, too,” Four suggests, offering a lopsided smile at Seven’s light chuckles.

“We tried looking for you earlier, you know,” Seven says after a while, watching Four carefully.

He scratches his head, saying, “well, you’re lucky you didn’t. Doubt I’d have made good company. I’m feeling…kind of sick? Kind of hungry? Think I might be constipated.” His shoulders aren’t as tense as it was before but his smile is still too tight to be genuine.

She follows his gaze back to where Two is and watches as he gives the slightest frown.

Stage fright.

If _she_ was nervous, she didn’t even want to think of how nerve-wracking it would be to walk up to Sir Hargreeves without anything to present. The man had a nasty tendency to poke and prod at every little imperfection once the timers started. If Four came by and it turned out he _couldn’t_ make things float…

What other option is there? But Four looked so miserable…

“Hey, maybe we can both do it,” she says instead, opting for optimism.

“Yeah?” Four turned to stare at her.

“It’s not like there’s a monopoly on powers, right?” She nods, saying,“ Do you think there’s like a lotto or something that decides what powers you get? Like there’s only one chance to get a particular power?”

“ _And_ ,” she continued, “wouldn’t it make more sense to have repeats? Like when you get the same toy from one of those Kinder joy eggs or capsule machines.”

“Well that’s unfortunate.” Four leaned back, resting his head against the wall. “ I got one of those toys. Not a fan. I blew all my allowance trying to get this cute mini microwave so now I have sixteen _tanuki_.”

They were all given allowances at the beginning of each month according to their placement on the leaderboard, which changed every term.

There were four levels: White Star, Red Star, Black Star, and Umbrella. Each level required them to meet a certain value of accumulated stickers. Numbers One and Five quickly gained the Umbrella rank (which required earning 5 umbrella stickers or an equivalent of 500 white stars every two weeks) and as such were happy to receive $300 a month in their name.

Seven, who ranked as a Red Star, received $50 a month. Four, who barely cleared the 100 white star sticker quota (the equivalent of 1 umbrella sticker) for the White Star rank, was stuck with a basic $30 a month.

“Didn’t you only have about twenty dollars left from last month?” asked Seven, surprised.

“Yeah but I used it to buy a screwdriver,” Four winked at her. “Kept it in a sleeve and waited ‘til no one was looking. Worked like a charm.”

For all his smugness, his smile turns into something a little more genuine.

“Would be great if you can do the same to the universe,” Four mused. “Hold it at knifepoint. Screwdriver-point?” He pokes a finger at her, miming the threatening stab of someone armed and dangerous.

“Give me your powers! Come on, I know you have them!” He says, transitioning from pretending to shank her to tickling her sides with determination. “Out with it! I know you’re special!”

It was easy to forget the dread of evaluation and her own feelings of nervousness. The tickle fight turned into slapsies which turned into clapping games and other hand-games Grace taught them during their recreation time. There was Chopsticks, where they would try to get the other to “lose” their hand before them by adding their fingers together. They played a bit of Mercy until Seven conceded to Four’s complaints that her hands were too soft for the game, which prompted Five to give him a run for his money instead.

By the time that the adults came up the stairs to usher them in, the children had all formed a semi-circle of hand-games the taught each other and disputed over.

“Can we _please_ just play I Wanna Be a _Tutubi_? All of us can play that one,” One whined, being at a significant disadvantage in that he wasn’t allowed to play most strength-based games with his siblings outside training unless they wanted to permanently disfigure their fingers.

“Absolutely not. Five’s just going to cheat and zap the pebble around,” Two was quick to voice out.

“But that’s the fun part!” Five defended.

“Sounds like you kids are getting along,” Grace says when she reaches the top of the stairs with Pogo, smiling at the chimes of “hi mom!” and “good evening, Miss Grace!” that went around the room.

“Now what are you all doing on the floor?” she said, extending a hand to Five—the one she was nearest to—and pulling him up.

Grace was wearing a pink wide collar dress that cinched at the waist and flared out in a full skirt. The little chainlink patterns embroidered at the bottom of the hemline gleamed when it caught the light as she moved one ankle strap heel primly in front of the other.

Seeing her so graceful and put-together almost made Seven blush about how they must look scattered on the floor in comparison.

Everyone followed Five’s lead and straightened their postures and patted their uniforms down, smoothing creases and making themselves more presentable. Grace helped straighten Four’s tie and fix his hair in an instant, smiling at Seven in approval.

“Ready?” She asked them.

“We’re ready,” Seven said.

“Yeah, let’s get those umbrella stickers!” Four exclaimed. His smile was so contagious that Seven couldn’t help but grin back.

She doesn’t catch how Grace’s smile wanes a little or how she looks like she’s about to say something before she doubled down on the smiling. She picks at a loose strand of hair and tucks it behind Seven’s ear.

“There,” she says, running her hands over Seven’s shoulders the way she did when she checked their posture and lifted her chin up. “Now you’re ready for anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Lots of thanks to Julie for beta-ing this chapter! You're a wonderful presence in the discord server and man, what a trooper. I hope you stay healthy and also I really wish I could find your AO3 😂. You gave a lot of productive feedback and I ended up adding an extra 6000 words to the original 7800 behemoth of a draft because of it.
> 
> 2) Ended up slicing this chapter in half but I'll have the next half posted up within the day. I just need to do a bit of proofreading!
> 
> 3) As of the time of writing and uploading this, we're still in a pandemic. Kids not being able to run around and just be kids without the fear of dying made me remember how much kids need touch and proximity and exposure to fellow kids to grow up somehow healthy. Babies born in quarantine are easily overstimulated and toddlers struggle with the frustration of having to master technology on top of the mental strain already given to them by regular homework. They get less time to actually play and not everyone has the luxury of having their guardians know how to help set up their zoom class or even have the patience to teach them basic arithmetic without snapping at them in frustration. I can only speak for my own country but with the way things are, the lack of good governance is stealing formative memories away from them all while killing their family's livelihoods, well-being, and, at times, their actual lives.
> 
> Anyway.
> 
> Chopsticks is a pretty popular hand game but if this is your first time hearing about it and you're bored and want to kill time with a friend, it works like this:
> 
>   * Each player begins with one finger raised on each hand. After the first player turns proceed clockwise. On a player's turn, they must either attack or split, but not both.
>   * To attack, a player uses one of their live hands to strike an opponent's live hand. The number of fingers on the opponent's struck hand will increase by the number of fingers on the hand used to strike.
>   * To split, a player strikes their own two hands together, and transfers raised fingers from one hand to the other as desired. A move is not allowed to simply reverse one's own hands. If any hand of any player reaches exactly five fingers, then the hand is killed, and this is indicated by raising zero fingers (i.e. a closed fist).
>   * A player may revive their own dead hand using a split, as long as they abide by the rules for splitting. However, players may not revive opponents' hands using an attack. Therefore, a player with two dead hands can no longer play and is eliminated from the game.
>   * If any hand of any player reaches more than five fingers, then five fingers are subtracted from that hand. For instance, if a 4-finger hand strikes a 2-finger hand, for a total of 6 fingers, then 5 fingers are automatically subtracted, leaving 1 finger. Under alternate rules, when a hand reaches 5 fingers and above it is considered a "dead hand".
>   * A player wins once all opponents are eliminated (by each having two dead hands at once).
>   * There is no variation in which a player can kill their own hand.
> 

> 
> 4) I Wanna Be a _Tutubi_ ( _"I wanna be a dragonfly"_ ), on the other hand, is a regional chanting game from the Philippines. You form a circle with a bunch of people, take a pebble, and pass it around to the beat of the chant. It's a fibbing game, so you keep your palms as concealed as possible and you sneak the pebble to the next person or you hold it until nearly the end of the chant if you want to set someone up. Whoever ends up holding the pebble by the end of the chant is deemed "it".
> 
> More importantly, the chant is catchy AF. It's just forever ingrained in my memory.
> 
> 5) I'm making a separate spreadsheet to keep track of the Umbrella Academy system in this fic but it's gonna be a while before I put it up here. But in case you're a little lost, here's a visual guide for what their sticker-based meritocracy looks like:


	4. Cost of Doing Business

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Sorry for the wait. Editing kinda got me really distracted because I was really excited about this chapter but I had some work to catch up on so...👉😅👉

Sir Hargreeves had a commanding presence. When he was in the room, all the children knew to be on their best behavior. Even without his behest, they all form a neat line spanning the back of the room, waiting to be acknowledged while the man rifled through the loose-leaf papers on his desk.

“Sir Hargreeves, Miss Seven and Master Four have something they want to present to you,” Pogo amicably announced. “They believe themselves to have manifested some form of telekinetic prowess.”

That seemed to get the man’s attention. 

“And how did this happen?” He peered over them from his desk with his monocle.

Pogo motioned for them to step forward. 

Seven exchanged a look with Four to see who would say it first but the gaunt-looking boy stayed mum.

So Seven squeaked out her reply. “Wednesday, sir. While we were playing.”

“And you’ve only been able to display this ability on the trunk?” The man asked with a sharpness to his tone. “You haven’t been able to replicate it with others?”

“No, sir.”

“Miss Seven and Master Five were attempting to replicate results, I believe,” Pogo interjected, “shortly after Miss Seven had taken her medicine to calm her nerves. So has Number Four, albeit to a less thorough extent.”

“And you’re certain about this?”

Sir Hargreeves’s usually stony expression barely flickered with interest, making Seven feel odd, having expected a more invested reaction. Curiosity, at the very least, if not excitement. Definitely not the indifference he was showing now.

He leaned back in his chair and regarded Seven and Four with a considering look.

“Pogo, if you don’t mind retrieving the trunk, we can sort this out in a minute or so.”

“Right away, sir,” Pogo said with a bow.

“No rush,” Sir Hargreeves waved off languidly. “Grace could deliver her report while we wait for you here.”

And wait they did.

As Grace’s mellifluous voice filled the room with evening updates, Seven entertained herself with looking at the variety of half-finished inventions Sir Hargreeves had scattered around the room.

The office was as large as the man himself felt. Every crevice of the house showcased his excellence—he wasn’t shy about displaying his awards and hunting trophies or his latest specimen of immediate interest—but his office held only one large portrait of the man staring down at onlookers from the mantle.

The rest of the room was paneled with old oak wood that made it reminiscent of an old adventurer’s boat. Like a captain’s cabin on dry land, which was fitting since the entire house boasted of his travels and expeditions.

Except, funnily enough, his office.

Seven thought it was funny how his room looked so different from their rooms. But, she supposed, Sir Hargreeves was a funny man.  _ Eccentric _ , the news anchors liked to call him.

And wallpaper didn’t seem like it would fit him very much anyway.

He was fur coats and leather. Brass telescopes and pressed paper. He looked like he recently stepped out of an Edwardian novel and had the temperament to show for it.

Seven thought that he looked very much like the stereotypical villain in cartoons with the monocle and the handlebar mustache. All he’s missing was a top hat, a cape, and a train track to tie innocent passerby to.

_ He might _ , she thought, sneaking glances at the man.  _ It might come up as an exercise for One. _

Would he laugh and wiggle his eyebrows the way they do in cartoons? Somehow, she had trouble imagining that.

The man caught her gaze just then and for a moment panic shot through her at the thought that maybe, somehow, he could hear her thoughts.

It was ridiculous, of course.  _ They _ were the only ones that had powers.

She still averted her eyes, though, because his glare unnerved her. She put all her willpower into staring at his mustache instead of looking him in the eye.

It felt like ages had passed when Pogo finally rejoined them, tugging the trunk with him as he went. He dragged it behind it a bit before One went to help him.

They placed it down in front of Sir Hargreeves’s desk with a  _ thud _ and the man gives Seven an expectant look.

He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on top.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he drawled.

Seven stepped forward, trying to concentrate on the happy feeling she had earlier and holding on to it.

And just as it did before, the trunk started to float.

Tension left her shoulders as relief flooded into her. The hard part was over and she could feel a smile growing on her face as she flushed in pride.

She marveled at it for a bit, watching it rotate lazily in the air. 

Sir Hargreeves kept his face unreadable, only nodding at her once, which she takes as a signal to put the trunk back down.

“Number Four,” he called.

Seven went back to join the rest of the children, squeezing Four’s hand in comfort as she passed Four. He squeezed her hand back and stepped forward in her place. 

He mimics the way Seven balled her fists together and scrunched his eyes shut.

A second passed by.

Followed by another.

And then, once again, the trunk lifts off the ground. Shaky at first but growing steadier by the minute.

Four took a double-take, looking back at Seven to grin at her in disbelief. Seven clapped for him and the boys cheered until Grace hushed at them. Even Two gave two thumbs up in his direction.

The room buzzed in excitement.

“So… _ both _ of them have telekinesis?” Three says, no doubt itching to go down to the lounge for celebratory ice cream and cake.

Sir Hargreeves, meanwhile, had other plans.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” he said, much to the confusion of the children.

“Much of our lives are spent in chaos,” he began. “Randomness. The lack of complete and total order has never been compatible with the average human’s egocentricity.”

He stood up, clothes barely wrinkling as he did so. They watched in curiosity as he approached the trunk, reaching down to reveal a switch at the bottom.

“And you see, people have an incredible talent for recognizing patterns. Combine it with human desire for meaningful connections—”

He rested a hand on top of the trunk before flicking at the switch.

“—you’ll find yourself seeing patterns where there are none—”

When he removed his hand, the trunk began to rise.

“—and be left with only disappointment.”

Silence fell in the room, a stark contrast to the joy moments before. Seven could feel a flush climb up to her cheeks and Four started to laugh awkwardly.

She felt a hand on her wrist and looked up at Three, who gave her a pitying smile. On her other side, Six was whispering at Five.

“Did you know it could do that?”

“Would have saved a lot of trouble if I did,” he frowned as he watched the trunk lazily spin mid-air. He looked over at Seven and she could practically see him trying to puzzle it out.

Seven was unwilling to give up.

“But earlier…earlier, in our room, Five and I tested—”

“Not adequate enough,” Sir Hargreeves cut in. “You only tested the trunk, did you not?”

“And you,” he addressed Four before Seven could put a word in. “You haven’t progressed your powers aside from what you thought you saw this afternoon, correct?”

He didn’t wait for a reply.

“I have seen all that I need. Unfortunately, this is nothing more than an old piece from my collection of early applications for the prototype Levitator,” he said. “You children must have toggled its standby setting whilst you were rattling it about like a pack of wild hyenas.”

He turned away, moving to the glass cabinet at the right side of the room, and pulled out a slim book.

“Since you’ve done me the favor of convening at this hour, we may as well introduce you to today’s reading: the _ Erga kai Hēmerai. _ ”

He hands the copy to Four, who received it with a jolt of surprise.

The boy opened the book, revealing its yellowing pages, and scrunched his nose at the smell of old paper. From where Seven was standing, she could see that the pages were filled with ancient Greek.

“Erm…nu-v-lla-e  _ amicitia _ -e tam  _ firma _ -e  _ atque _ immortales,” the boy stammered through.

Sir Hargreeves clicked his tongue in disapproval.

“It seems your memory is failing you, Number Four. Perhaps you should have been investigating your reading comprehension instead,” he barked out. Four flinched in dismay.

“The  _ Erga kai Hēmerai, _ ” he said sonorously, commanding the attention of everyone in the room. “Otherwise known as Hesiod’s collection of poems, Works and Days. One of its notable tales is that of Pandora, who was first introduced in the Theogonia as the woman who was blessed by the gods with gifts and a jar that should never be opened.”

“She became obsessed,” he emphasized, looking at Seven pointedly, “with what she cannot have.” 

“Once she can no longer stand her curiosity, she forgoes all warning and opens it, and to her surprise, unleashed death and all the evils that have plagued mankind. She closed the lid too late and only managed to keep one inside.”

He walked in front of his desk, leaning forward so Seven can see every grave line that was etched into his expression.

“Do you know what the last evil in her jar was?” He said, dropping his voice to a soft tone.

The children exchanged glances, unsure what to say. Seven just shook her head  _ no _ .

“Hope,” Sir Hargreeves said simply.

And with that he drew himself back to his full height, eyes narrowed in disdain.

“ _ Hope _ is misleading,” he said. “It can hurt you just as much as a present you expect to be benevolent can rise and sting you in the face like a vengeful wasp. It is the evil that people cling to, the last evil that’s the most difficult to overcome.” 

“Hope tricks you into ignoring the grim truth, hides you in safe fantasies instead of the wickedness of reality, and thereby endangers you in your  _ vulnerability _ ,” he spat out.

“Just as Pandora allowed herself to obsess and be tricked, so did you unleash chaos into your own team.”

Seven stared ahead and tried her best to not blink. Sir Hargreeves wasn’t yelling but the shadows of his face made him look angry, and Seven knew that she shouldn’t cry. She  _ cannot _ convey any emotion, any weakness, because she shouldn’t give him more fuel for his anger.

“And in that chaos, you have allowed yourselves to  _ hope, _ ” Seven lowered her head in shame as he hissed at them, “and be distracted from your responsibilities.” He glared at Four for that last one, whose shoulders slumped at his reprimand.

“But worst of all, you have not only wasted  _ your  _ time but mine and Pogo’s as well as your peers’.” 

He spared a last glare at the two of them before dismissing them.

“Go back to your dormitories,” he said with finality.

There was a collective sigh of relief and everyone rushed to get out. Two was first out the door, Six close at his heels. Three had an arm wrapped around Four’s shoulders while One walked beside them.

Five lingered at the door for a bit when Seven made no move to leave, only to be ushered out by Grace with a gentle nudge on his back.

“It’s twenty minutes to curfew, Number Seven,” Sir Hargreeves said after the sound of her siblings’ footsteps had faded and left the two of them in silence. “If you miss the window for bathroom use, you’ll have to do without.”

He went to his drawing board, picking up his drafting compass and resuming work as if Seven weren’t in the room.

And if it weren’t for a nagging question she had, Seven would have preferred being anywhere but in the room as well.

“I-I thought…am I…? W-will I—”

“Eighteen minutes.”

Right. Get to the point.

She drew in a shaky breath. 

“Dad,” she said slowly, carefully pronouncing her words so she wouldn’t stammer. “When will I get my powers?”

His hand paused over his draft.

He pursed his lips but didn’t say anything as he peered down at her through his monocle.

She didn’t know how to read his expression but there was no trace of a sneer, only contemplation.

For a moment, she thinks he wouldn’t answer her. But the moment passes and when he spoke, his words neither softness nor comfort.

“Not everyone can be powerful.”

It was funny. She’d never thought of the man as anything in the neighborhood of sugarcoating. But when his voice came out clear and strong, it still surprised her.

“And even then, not everyone can  _ handle _ power.”

The pity in his gaze was enough to clue her in even before he spoke, and when he did, it was as if she’d only been waiting for him to say it out loud as permission to cry.

He clasped a firm hand on her left shoulder and softened his voice.

“The sooner you accept this,” he tells her, “the easier it will be for you in the future.”

She stared after him, feeling her eyes grow wet. She tried to blink it back as she turned to leave when Sir Hargreeves called after her for the last time.

“Oh, and Number Seven?” He said just as she reached the threshold. “Regardless of supernatural abilities, I expect you to strive for excellence. Normalcy is not an excuse for any of you to slack off. There are always those who prey on the weak and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.”

“Do you understand, Number Seven?”

There was nothing kind in his eyes. Whatever it was, she knew it wasn’t comforting. It was a warning not to slip because out of everyone,  _ she _ was the one who had no powers.  _ She _ was the odd one out. The mistake.

The weakest link.

And that was it for her.

She marched out of the room before the man could formally dismiss her, trying and failing to stifle her sobs.

It takes her a moment to compose herself and only really does when she runs into Pogo, but even that took a while. Whenever the simian tried to calm her down, it only seemed to get her to cry harder.

In the end, it took the numbness of a third pill for the day to get her to breathe normally.

And contrary to what Sir Hargreeves had said, Pogo did allow her extra time to wash up in the bathroom, free from the pushing and shoving of the other children.

She had an extra 15 minutes to hug her knees under the water and feel miserable in peace.

She stayed in until the water turned lukewarm and the soapy bubbles that covered her started to disappear.

Will this change anything? 

She stared glumly at the rubber toy Grace put in the tub with her in an attempt to cheer her up. It was a monkey peeking from inside a yellow submarine.

She reached out a finger and prodded it gently.

It floated away from her at the slightest pressure.

Will Four be mad at her for having arranged the presentation in the first place? She didn’t know it would turn out like this, but the boy had looked as upset as Seven felt.

Will they all stop wanting to play with her? She hoped not.

But then, if she’d learned anything from this day it would be one thing:

She can’t trust hope.

* * *

Pogo has never known Sir Reginald Hargreeves to be wrong. The man always knew what to do, squinting at the world’s most demanding questions and emerging with an answer time and time again. There were no problems that he didn’t have a solution for, and while those solutions may not always be pretty, it was always better than the alternative. He has watched the man singlehandedly save the world from catastrophe each and every time with a cool head, often at great personal sacrifice.

But sometimes those sacrifices weren’t always for him to make and the crying wreck of a child in his arms was starting to make it all the more difficult for Pogo to accept his master’s wishes as readily as he used to.

But accept it he must.

He has been by his master’s side for decades. He had been there to witness first-hand how the polymath had to make certain choices in order to avoid major societal upheaval. That kind of bond? Not an easy thing to gain. It wasn’t something you threw away. It was an  _ honor _ . 

So he will keep serving to the best of his abilities and salvage what he can of the children’s happiness, but he will not go against his master’s word.

Besides, it was just a small thing he asked of him.

“I don’t—I don’t  _ understand _ ,” she wails at him. “We did e- _ everything _ —right. And— _ hic! _ —I was going— _ hic! _ —to— _ hic! _ —race with— _ hic! _ —Four— _ hic!— _ and  _ fly _ —” 

She broke off as her breaths quickened into an incoherent pile of hiccups.

(It had been easy enough for him to modify the trunk with a miniature prototype of Hargreeves’s Levitator on his way to retrieve it from the children’s rooms.)

“Shhh. It’s okay,” he tries to reassure her. “You can still race the old-fashioned way.” 

The little girl just shakes her head, wringing both of her hands together—a nervous tic she has whenever she was particularly distressed.

(A simple enough task that with the children all in one place and distracted, no one was around to witness him casually sticking the anti-gravity pad to the base of the trunk before he took it down with him to Sir Hargreeves’s office.)

She’s babbling now, her face red and blotchy, looking frantically around the room while she struggles to communicate.

Pogo could barely comprehend her, but he catches snippets of “wrong” and “no”.

“Hmm? What’s that? Wrong?” He repeats after her. “What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head and clutches at her shirt, clasping and unclasping her hands over where her heart is.

(It had taken less than a minute.)

He frowned.

“You? You’re wrong?”

This time, the girl nods her little head, tears starting anew.

(And no one would ever know.)

His heart ached.

“Oh, Miss Seven…”

There was no way for anyone to know that the trunk had been tampered with. No way for Number Seven to know that it wasn’t her fault.

(He’ll have to make sure of it. Soon after the demonstration, after attending to her, he’ll have to take the trunk down to storage. Even if someone were to dig it up later, the freshly-drilled holes would have aged and it would be as if it had always been that way from the beginning.)

“You don’t need powers to be a part of this family,” he says to console her. He bends down to wrap a long arm around her shoulders and she immediately circles her tiny arms around his neck, abandoning all pretense of composure.

It’s a good thing she does because the air started to pick up in the tell-tale sign of her powers on the verge of release. Hidden in his one-armed hug, she doesn’t notice the lights flicker nor the pressing weight of air in the room.

Like this, she doesn’t have to worry about the carnage.

She sobs for a long while and he could feel a spot on his shoulder grow wet. The books on his shelves rattle and a crack goes through the windows of his office.

“Shhh,” he says. “Breathe, Miss Seven. In and Out, like we practiced.”

She does as she tells him, breathing loudly through her mouth. He repeats this a few times and she isn’t quite calm, but her sniffles die down enough for him to be able to discern the words she was trying to say.

(He’ll just have to fix the spidery fissures in the window by morning.)

“What if he doesn’t want— _ hic! _ —me anymore?” Her voice comes out muffled as she tries to hide her face with her arms, swiping at her face furiously. “What i-if he gives me— _ hic! _ —away and goes and finds a special baby with powers like I’m supposed to?”

“You will  _ always _ be a part of this family, Miss Seven. This is your home,” he says as firmly as he can. He means it, too, because where else would young Miss Seven go? Where else could she be safe, be cared for? 

Who would do as much as he does for her?

_ This _ was where she belongs.

Seven looks up at him, eyes wide and watery.

“But I don’t…”

“I don’t have powers either,” he reminds her gently. “But I do like to consider myself to be part of this family.”

She frowns and he could practically see the gears turning in her eight-year-old head, thinking it over before dismissing it with a shake of her head.

“That doesn’t count,” she protests. “You’re special. You’re a…an  _ advanced _ chimpanzee.  _ And _ a doctor.  _ And _ a pilot and a ton of other cool stuff. And I’m just…”

“I wasn’t born special,” he replies. “I even had to study to get my doctorate. But you know what I was born with?”

He wraps his other arm around her to give her a gentle squeeze.

“These arms.”

The girl relaxes, shoulders drooping down in reluctant acceptance.

“You don’t need powers to let people know you love them. That you care for them,” he says, tucking her head under his chin and hoping to whatever god exists that it would be enough. “You don’t need to be able to fly to spend time with them.”

_ Let this be enough _ .

“You’ll find your own special thing at your own pace. Something you’re passionate about. You can take that and use it to make yourself special. Like me,” he added, smiling at her.

_ It’s all I can give you. _

She watches him intently, like the very fate of the world hung on his answer.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He holds her there for a while, patting her hair gently until she tires herself out. Until all her tears subside.

_ It will have to be enough. _

“Are you ready to go to bed now?” He asks her.

When she nods, he passes her on to Grace, who’s been standing by after she put the rest of the children to their rooms.

“Good night, Pogo,” Seven said in a small voice.

“Sweet dreams, Miss Seven.”

And with that, he makes his way back to Sir Reginald’s office.

* * *

When Pogo returns to Reginald’s office a good hour or so later, he found him surrounded by screens. They were directly linked to the video feed in the security room, covering the entire expanse of the Hargreeves estate.

“…and sent Grace down to her station after the ordeal,” he finished, having retold everything of note to his employer.

“And the girl?” Sir Reginald asks.

_ How did she take it? _ He left unsaid.  _ Did he manage her well? Does he have to change tactics, switch gears? _

Pogo tilted his head to one side, thinking of a way to respond.

“She’s a child,” he settles on as a way of explanation.

“She is powerful,” the man corrects him, not missing a beat. His eyes never leave the monitors lining the wall. “She must know control or suffer for the lack of it.”

Number Seven must have taken a detour on her way to her own room but what was surprising was how all of the children seemed to have followed her line of thinking to sneak into one of the larger rooms on the floor.

It was already three hours past curfew. The man had declined Pogo’s offer to send Grace down to escort the children back to their quarters, preferring to use this as an opportunity to study their behavior.

Sir Reginald notices him staring at one screen, from the camera in little Miss Three’s room. “What do you think?” He asks Pogo.

“Number Five has already made an earlier attempt to console her,” the man comments, “but Number Three’s decision to coerce Number Two into sneaking the rest of them out of their rooms seems to be more successful.” 

From the grainy birds-eye view of the room, he could see how Master Five had settled himself on top of the dresser beside Miss Seven, who was starting to nod off with her head on Three’s shoulder while Four appeared to prattle on from her other side. The rest of the boys seemed to be sleepy as well, judging from the way Six swayed where he sat by the foot of the bed with Two. One sat cross-legged on the floor, folding his arms on top of the mattress so he could cushion his head comfortably while watching the rest of them.

“It’s a wonderful display of solidarity,” Pogo answers after a while. It must be nice, for them to be able to rely on each other at such a young age. Already he could see Master Four in a happier state than he was a few hours ago.

Sir Reginald scoffs. Clearly, his employer had other ideas.

“Those two need to learn how to be by themselves,” he grouses.

“Isn’t loyalty a good thing?” Pogo asks curiously. 

“We encourage  _ loyalty _ , not dependence,” Sir Reginald tuts at him. He turns one of the screens so that it was facing Pogo and taps against the one that showed all the children huddling together.

“See how they cling together? How will they ever learn to handle the pressure of highly volatile situations if they need constant reassurance?” He rants at his assistant. “There’s not much we can do about the girl but if Number Four sees her comforted at every turn, what do you suppose he’ll think? That it would be perfectly acceptable to fall short of standards as well? He already has a penchant for indolence! He doesn’t need more reason to fuel his sloth.”

Personally, Pogo disagreed, but there was logic to his reasoning, so he doesn’t say anything while the older man continued to grumble under his breath.

“Perhaps it would be best to accelerate them through their training programs,” he says, tapping his pen impatiently against his notebook. “Seeing as they’re approaching the preadolescence of their powers, it shouldn’t be long until they’ll be in need of a curriculum tailored to their individual skills.”

And there was truth to that statement. Numbers One, Three, and Five were already making fast progress in their studies but were making it difficult for the even-numbered children to adjust to their pace. It was somewhat amusing that the odd numbers were ahead in their performance using odd strategies, with even Number Seven pulling ahead of Number Six by a hair’s width.

Where Master Five focused more on developing his powers (which easily garnered him Umbrella stickers for less minor work) and One bolstered ahead with his initiative and determination, Misses Three and Seven often shouldered work together outside of class (which made the work they had to do seem less).

Of course, once they were all put into training programs specific to managing their powers, it wouldn’t take too long for the girls’ approach to crumble. Miss Seven would have to work harder to meet the term requirements for the rank she currently holds. It would be a rough and lonely road.

_ What a pity. _

“Sir, if I may,” Pogo interjects, trying to think of a way to lessen the burden on the Academy’s most sensitive recruit. “The children have been doing well enough in their studies but perhaps an approach to individual studies would require more scaffolding. Apart from young Master Five, I’ve noted that further discussion into certain subjects might best be assigned to professionals. The children are growing beyond Grace’s capabilities and while she is an astounding piece of work, we only have one of her to divide among the children’s demands.”

“I believe,” he pitches at him,“that the best move in order for her to be able to fulfill her role as a caretaker is to expand our staff.”

Reginald considers it for a moment.

“Just so,” he agreed. “I imagine it would take some time to acquire enough data about their natural abilities well enough to see gaps in their education. Would you please see to it that some of that time be put into creating a mentorship program by next year?”

He didn’t have to say it. Pogo was already running the numbers in his head. Who would be the best fit for his wards? He ran through his mental list of researchers and professors from his earlier days. He could already see Five sending the most formidable lecturers away crying. One would be the easiest to choose for: the boy was like a sponge when it came to picking up new things to learn.

He should find a good teacher for Seven; one who could handle her meltdowns and give her the motivation to hone skills outside of superpowers.

“I’ll look into names,” Pogo says. “Would this semester be a good time for revisions to the curriculum or should we project into the next school year?”

“A soft launch for the next year should work well. Six months should be enough time to observe the children and look for adequate teachers. Pencil us in for a fundraiser or a mixer for the next few weeks in order for us to headhunt the right staff”

“About that,” Pogo chimes in. “You have an invitation to a couple of conferences including the annual SICON that’s waiting for confirmation of your attendance.”

“Who will be there?” Sir Reginald asks, referring to the latter. 

“There’s the Benfords, the English Venns, the Caludes from Romania, as well as a few emerging names from East Asia,” Pogo lists off, trying to recall which ones have children. After today’s display, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for Four and Seven’s downtrodden disposition. Surely a playdate would liven the atmosphere up for the Umbrella Academy.

“The Benfords are vying for a hedge fund by the end of the third quarter,” he comments.

“Pedestrian.”

“What about the Perseus Group?” Pogo suggests. “They’re currently in the process of building a research facility with a strong focus on biote—”

“Ostentatious,” Sir Reginald cuts in with a dismissive scoff that was easy to shrug off, given that John Perseus was an ill-mannered man from what Pogo has seen. His offspring, in Pogo’s opinion, was equally tempestuous and wasn’t someone he’d want the children to play with anyway.

So who did that leave them?

“Charlene Simonen has been looking for backers to test the effectiveness of using mass timber in infrastructure,” Pogo floats the idea to the intrepid businessman. “She’s the one who has been pushing for city-mandated restrictions on building demolition in order to reduce carbon emissions.” 

Sir Reginald had recently shown interest in the state of depleting resources. On top of the problem of fossil fuels, natural resources such as water and sand are starting to be more expensive and difficult to access, all stemming from one crucial problem: the way and the rate at which the world consumed natural resources was more than the natural world can provide.

One of the biggest problems engineering and manufacturing firms now faced was that of sustainability. Sand, for example, is one of the most fundamental building materials in the new world. It’s used in new and traditional ceramics to make electrical insulators and semiconductors depending on their crystalline structure, as well as in glasses from small kitchenware to the windows of a rocket that can withstand the temperature of about a thousand Celcius without breaking under pressure. Sand is also used in concrete, one of the favorite materials architects use due to durability in any environment and the flexibility of shaping it in a way that would be impossible to duplicate with brickwork.

But the problem with sand (or any material needed in building and keeping a busy metropolitan city running) is that the type of sand that is good for building—the type whose crystalline structure has a lot of grip—can only be accessed through mining. And that doesn’t even include the amount of energy and waste that comes with processing raw materials so it could be used either commercially or industrially.

It was a fine line that the Umbrella corporation walked because while Sir Reginald has made his views on the longevity of the natural world a secret (there had been numerous quotes made in his name on his doomsday predictions, including but not limited to natural resources), it was only the eccentric reputation he’d curated over the years that helped him navigate the shady waters and closed-door meetings between mining companies, allowing his businesses to still have access to the raw materials he needs.

But it did put a sparkle in his eyes whenever he saw the rest of the world come just a little closer to the one he envisions. It also tickled at him whenever some poor soul made an attempt to back him into a corner.

Once, he found himself in a particularly good mood when one of his suppliers attempted to blackmail him. Sir Reginald had responded by pulling out his shares and acquiring land, converting it so that he could make all of his production in-house. 

Within six quarters, he’d not only made up the cost in his equity but also reduced their annual expense while his blackmailer went bankrupt after struggling and failing to deal with the consequence of losing one of their biggest clients.

He didn’t hide the smirk whenever the news chronicled his less spirited business associates falling out of the game for good. He was more likely to pop a bottle of champagne.

_ The price of incompetence _ , he’d say with satisfaction.

“Simonen…Simonen….” Sir Reginald trails off in thought. “Now where do I know that name from?”

“Ah,” he turns to Pogo. “Simonen-Grimaldi. Haven’t they recently had a kidnapping scare?”

“I’m sure they would appreciate additional security,” Pogo responds, jumping on the opportunity. “And they do have children. Would May be an appropriate time to schedule a playdate?”

“Make it June,” Sir Reginald replies. “The children will have to be prepared.”

He  _ would _ want them prepared. Pogo could already see the business plan forming in the man’s head. It would be an opportunity to check on a lot of his investments—including the Umbrella Academy.

  
  
  


It’s late when Pogo returns to his quarters. Rather than disturb them, he had chosen to let all the children fall to sleep on their own before having Grace move them back to their rooms.

When he takes his jacket off and goes over his nightly rituals, he spots the cover of Master Five’s notebook where he’d left it on his desk

He takes it with him, running his fingers over the cover, and sets it down on his bedside table with a sigh.

He tucks himself into bed and tries not to lose sleep over it.

After all, he had another day at work tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby's first gaslighting experience eeeeeeeeeeeeeeey
> 
> 1)It's not that I don't like Pogo. Or Reggie, for that matter! It's just that as _characters_ , I really like them. But as people? THEY ARE SHIT. But I do think that the thing that gives them that extra quality of assholery they basically pass on to the Hargreeves kids is that they genuinely think that they're right. Or, at least, at one point they stopped trying to do better. Also, I just really want to highlight that to become a successful billionaire, you have to turn a blind eye to a LOT of stuff. Compromising one thing for the sake of the other. Y'all ever meet business people who are _really_ good at what they do? Man, they're SCARY. It's impressive but like....scary. That's what Reggie is to me.
> 
> 2) If you guys are just chilling or whatever, give this podcast a listen! It's really good. This episode's basically an elaboration on the sand issue in the latter half of this fic and it's just good to put things into perspective [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-on-sand/]. If you're more of a reader, _Stuff Matters_ by Mark Miodownik is also a very cool read that explores just how complex the system of man-made materials we all live in is.
> 
> 3) Yes, I'm just secretly scamming y'all into learning at this point. Y'all thought you can escape from school? Bitch not in this house.


End file.
